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We Are the Scrappy Ones – Author Interview with Rebekah Taussig

Guest post by Lerner Publishing Group, 2025 Silver Sponsor

We Are the Scrappy Ones – Author Interview with Rebekah Taussig

What inspired you to write We Are the Scrappy Ones?

I met with a group of disabled students at a summer day camp a few years ago, and I loved them, loved them. They were so funny and interesting. I could have chatted with them all day. But it was interesting to me that whenever the topic of disability came up, a lot of them only spoke about the experience in very medical terms, naming the surgeries they’d had or their specific diagnoses. I would have spoken about disability very similarly when I was that age. I didn’t have any other framework or language or stories through which to understand my experience with my body. One of the significant patterns in the experience of disability is that often we are born into families and communities that don’t share our experience. And by extension, the passing on of disability culture and identity is often something we get in roundabout ways and much later in life, if at all. And so, after hanging out with these fantastic teenagers, I went home and I wrote them a poem – a tiny set of words to instill in them a sense of belonging and pride in a disability community. Disability can often feel alienating and lonely, but I wanted them to also see the ways in which disability can be a pathway to home, connection, and belonging. 

How did you come up with the title for the book?

“We are the scrappy ones” was initially the first line of the poem I wrote for the group of disabled teenagers I met at a day camp.  As I tried to think about a defining characteristic of an experience as deep and wide and sprawling as disability, I thought about the mismatch between a disabled body/mind and the world as it’s arranged around us. I thought about what it feels like to navigate on wheels when the world is made of stairs and narrow pathways and rough terrain, but I also thought of all of the easy ways you find yourself pushed out of a system that has rigid expectations around speed, forms of communication, social dynamics, appearance, and so-called milestones. I thought about the power of the word “normal” and all the ways so many of us don’t match that. And in that sweeping, textured experience of embodying a mismatch, I marveled over the fact that we continue to exist. We are here, we are alive, we are finding our own ways. And that, to me, captures that spirit of scrappiness. It’s a trait that sometimes exhausts or annoys me, but it’s one I always value. So, if “we” – the great, wide, diverse range of disabled folks – are anything collectively, I do see a sort of scrappiness – a creativity, a gorgeous resistance – in us. I take a lot of pride in that, and I like the idea of being able to instill that pride in others, especially those who don’t quite feel it or see it yet.  

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

A lot of it depends on what they bring to the book. Most of the people who live on this planet either have a disability or know or love someone who has a disability. And for a very long time, the narratives we had for understanding disability came to us through a nondisabled lens. Because of that, many of us perceive disability with a lot of fear, shame, and a desperate drive to overcome and triumph over. I hope this book can offer a deep-breath release from those narratives. 

When I wrote and then later honed and polished the words for this book, I was thinking first and foremost of disabled readers. As those readers move through these pages, I hope they feel a deep sense of belonging – a deep knowing or remembering that they are not alone. I hope they feel empowered to joyfully lean into who they are exactly as they are. I hope they feel an ease and peace in knowing they don’t need to prove themselves, push harder, or triumph over anything. I hope they soak in the tremendous value their mere existence brings to our world. I hope they feel pride in their connection to a magnificent group of people. I hope they feel part of something bigger than themselves. 

For nondisabled readers, I hope this book can expand their thinking about disability. I know and understand that a lot of nondisabled caregivers (parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers and therapists, medical teams) come into their roles without first-hand knowledge of what a disabled child’s day to day reality feels like or what shapes their future might take – that a lot of their understanding of disability is shaped profoundly by frameworks that come out of the medical world. I hope this book can play a part in breaking open rigid ways of thinking and be a gentle nudge in lifelong pursuits of listening to folks with disabilities. 

For nondisabled peers (siblings, friends, classmates), I hope these words and pictures are in their minds when they experience disability out in the world with strangers, other loved ones, or even eventually within their own body or mind. We do not need to fear disability or applaud disability. Instead, we can simply bear witness to an experience that has just as much value as every other dot on the giant map of human diversity.

What has your own journey with disability been?

When I was quite young, I did not think much about my disability at all. I don’t remember the process of losing mobility or sensation, but I do have very vivid memories of finding ways to do what I wanted to do – pulling myself up to the top bunk, scooting around the neighborhood on my red tricycle, donning elegant dress-up gowns to go to the library, making up dance routines in the front yard to greet my dad when he got home from work, whooshing freely and easily across the floor the first time I sat in a wheelchair. As I became more aware of the ways others perceived me, I started to take on a shameful narrative of disability. I found more and more ways to separate myself from my disability – which is to say, I learned to separate from my own body. I’m almost 40 years old now, and I’m still trying to find my way back. It’s a project I’ve been working on for about a decade. It was through reading work by disability studies scholars and connecting with other folks who understand the experience of disability that I started to understand disability beyond the medical (disability in need of cure) and religious (disability as a sign of sin) narratives I’d inherited – that I was empowered to pay attention to my own experience and perceptions as I determined how I wanted to tell my own story. The process of self-narration changed everything for me, and it’s that tool I hope to offer other disabled folks. We are the only ones who get to decide what disability means to us. These are our stories to tell.

“Warm, poetic, and affirming.”—starred, Kirkus Reviews

“Disability advocate Taussig (Sitting Pretty) directly addresses children with disabilities in this beautiful affirmation of belonging, imagination, and self-worth . . . A meaningful work for children with disabilities and those who interact with them, this is a purchase for all collections.”—School Library Journal

About the Author

Rebekah Taussig has a PhD in creative nonfiction and disability studies from the University of Kansas and she writes personal stories about disability. Her memoir in essays Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body was published by Harper One in 2021. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and young son.

Substack: https://rebekahtaussig.substack.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sitting_pretty/ 

Rebecca Taussig’s Website: https://rebekahtaussig.com/