TUE, APR 25, 7:30 PM
HALL CENTER CONFERENCE HALL
(and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

*ADDITIONAL EVENT: Book-signing and meet-and-greet at The Raven Book Store WED, APR 26, 6:00 - 7:00 PM

From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—an “exquisite” (Oprah Daily) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen.

“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.”

So begins Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, 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 her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself.

Chloé Cooper Jones is a KU Graduate, philosophy professor, and freelance journalist from Tonganoxie, KS, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2020, Cooper Jones was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing for “Fearing for His Life,” a profile of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the killing of Eric Garner. Her work has appeared in publications including GQ, The Verge, VICE, Bookforum, New York Magazine, and The Believer, and has been selected for both The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Sports Writing.