Barstow Reads is modeled on the One Book One City/Community or One Book One School/Campus model. By reading the same text, community members come together to share, discuss, and engage with one another in a common literary experience. The One Book/One Community model offers the Barstow area an opportunity to promote literacy by reading and celebrating the written word; it demonstrates the value of human stories and allows community members to perhaps find common ground.
For more information:
Email BarstowReads@Barstow.edu
Interview by Tamara Taggart
TELUS Talks. “TELUS Talks | Sitting Pretty: Rebekah Taussig.” YouTube, 21 Sept. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHoVUMUbq58. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.
Come into the Library for your free copy!
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story-- Publisher's description.
Check out a copy on Libby!
ACCESS Mission
Barstow Community College provides a variety of services and classes through ACCESS in an effort to equalize educational opportunities for students with disabilities as they move toward their educational or vocational goals.
