My Oceans

Book excerpt: An urgent exploration of caring and mothering on a planet in crisis In a swell of sea-linked essays, Christina Rivera explores the kinship between marine animals, humans, and Earth’s blue womb. Rivera’s investigative questions begin with the toxic burden of her body and spiral out—to a grieving orca, a hunted manta ray, a pregnant sea turtle, a spawning salmon, an “endling” porpoise, and the “mother culture” of sperm whales—as she redefines what it means to mother and defend a collective future. Braiding memoir with embodied climate science, Rivera challenges that it’s not anthropomorphism to feel deep connection to nonhuman species and proposes that gathering in collective grief is essential amid the sixth mass extinction. For ecofeminists, fans of Rachel Carson and Terry Tempest Williams—and for anyone who feels themself disintegrate in the presence of the sea—My Oceans offers a timely and wondrous descent into the deep waters of interconnection in which we swim.