Poser

Ten years ago, Claire Dederer put her back out while breastfeeding her baby daughter. Told to try yoga by everyone from the woman behind the counter at the co-op to the homeless guy on the corner, she signed up for her first class. She fell madly in love. Over the next decade, she tackled Triangle, Wheel and the dreaded Crow, becoming fast friends with some poses and developing long-standing feuds with others. At the same time she found herself confronting the forces that shaped her generation. Daughters of women who ran away to find themselves and made a few messes along the way, Claire and her peers grew up determined to be good, good, good. Yoga seemed to fit right into this virtuous programme, but to her surprise the deeper Claire went into the poses the more they tested her most basic ideas of what goodness really means. Poser tells the story of how yoga helped Claire to discover that being joyful is sometimes more important than being good. Witty and heartfelt, sharp and irreverent, this is a book for anyone who has ever tried to stand on their head while keeping both feet on the ground.

Claire Dederer is an essayist, critic and reporter. Her writing has
appeared in Vogue, the New York
Times, Slate, Yoga
Journal, Real Simple and the
Nation. She lives on an island near Seattle with her
husband and their two children.