It Wasn't Meant to Be Perfect A Memoir

Folk musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate Gaelynn Lea's warm, funny, poignant memoir is a love letter to every kind of body, to music, and to making it work--inspiring us to embrace all of life's experiences with heart and determination Gaelynn Lea was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta. Her parents were loving, cash-strapped theater kids, and she grew up racing about in her first electric wheelchair, taking adaptive ballet classes, and handing out playbills at her parents' dinner theater shows. Transfixed by an orchestra performance in 5th grade, Gaelynn was determined to play the cello. When her shortened limbs made playing the instrument challenging, she employed a familiar tactic: adapting. What if she held a violin upright in her wheelchair, like the world's tiniest cello? That what if was the key that unlocked her lifelong music career. After winning NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert in 2016, Lea became a full-time touring musician--and that's when she began truly to struggle with the inaccessibility of the music world.