Her body is strong, and she torques it forcefully against the god, trying to free herself. She smashes the hardest part of her palm into Pluto’s face. He grimaces. Bernini leaves Pluto dazed, off balance, faltering, reminding us that Cupid’s arrow kidnaps his agency, too. Ovid’s myth tells us of two forced transformations and Bernini shows us two people in motion, struggling unsuccessfully against their fate. The statue is bright, the brightest thing in the room, and it hums with the energy of the aggrieved — Pluto hurts Venus who hurts Pluto who hurts Proserpine; this circular hurt, placed on Prosperone’s thigh, her stone flesh yielding below the god’s grasp. It is stupefying; I am dimmed by awe, aversion, desire.  — Chloé Cooper Jones, Ch. 1, The Berninis, p.7.

Join a group of enthusiastic readers to discuss great memoirs of relevance to education! Our first Book Club for Fall Semester is on Easy Beauty (New York, NY: Avid Reader Press, 2022) by Pulitizer Prize Finalist Chloé Cooper Jones who explores disability, motherhood, and her lifelong search for beauty.

“Moving through the world in a body that looks different than most, Jones learned on to factor ‘pain calculations’ into every plan, every situation. She was born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis, which affects both the stature and gait, and so her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen–or not seen–has informed her lens on the world for her entire life… But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), she feels something in her shift, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied and had denied herself. From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths. [This] is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.” — Dust jacket

Fall Book Club is co-sponsored by the Graduate Writing Center. It meets once a month throughout the semester, with a program for three books. It is open to all students and staff, and the first eight people to rsvp will receive a free copy.

Where: 305 Russell