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***A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR***
***LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER***
A beautiful blend of memoir and oceanography that explores the ocean's depths and many of the big questions -- about identity, the nature of work, the pull of family -- facing young people today
A young queer science writer on some of the ocean's strangest creatures and what they can teach us about human empathy and survival
As a mixed Chinese and white non-binary writer working in a largely white, male field, science journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments.
Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature: the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs, the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams, the bizarre Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena) and other uncanny creatures lurking in the deep ocean, far below where the light reaches. Imbler's debut weaves the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family and coming of age, implicitly connecting endangered sea life to marginalised human communities and asking how they and we adapt, survive and care for each other.
This far-reaching, unique collection shatters our preconceptions about the sea and what it means to survive.
Author: Sabrina Imbler
Paperback Published 19 November 2024 272 pages
Originally published in hardcover 9 May 2023
Review by Kae
No essay collection has ever struck me as generous as this. Generous both in its intellectuality- it's willingness to explain, elaborate, dissect- and also its generosity to share intimately the author's own life. In this part memoir part science writing text, each essay orients us in a cross-section of sea creatures, elucidated as mirrors to our worlds above sea; autobiographical snapshots into Imbler's experiences of being mixed-race, queer, and all those experiences beyond mere oversaturated nominators (think the mother octopus and intergenerational trauma, dancing ocean crabs and queer nightlife...) I'll admit I was a bit preemptively sceptical- but Imbler's talent in uniting even the most abstract scientific phenomena with the most deeply human, self-excavations, was so satisfying. I wouldn't normally call myself a science non-fiction writer- but this one unearthed a curiosity that I reckon I haven't experienced since childhood.
'A miraculous, transcendental book' ED YONG
'An astonishing debut' GUARDIAN