My Life in Sea Creatures: A young queer science writer’s reflections on identity and the ocean

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Reading notes This book is after a few chapters, so far successful, very strange mix of science, being young and gay and full of angst, and the story of her mother in China. It's quite unclassifiable but interesting. There are quite mind-boggling sentences, "My grandmother grew up believing she was ugly because everyone told her so. A friend of her father's, their wealthy neighbour's sixth concubine always told my mother she was ugly, even for a five year old."

We Swarm: Riis Beach, New York: famous for queer culture, there was a time they were there during an inundation of blobby creatures, perhaps salps. Salps periodically swarm for food, unlike Pride in NYC, which is for a variety of reasons. This is a fun piece, a delightful break from the emotional challenge of 'Striker,' or the intellectual challenge of 'Hybrid.' Imbler is a terrific talent... with brutal candor and elegant metaphor, [ My Life in Sea Creatures] reveals the gap between where we are today and a truly inclusive and connected world Science Magazine Imbler is [...] a gifted science and nature writer, capable of describing sea creatures with knowledge, originality and supple poeticism Bidisha Mamata, ObserverA beautiful lure that caught me; the lush colors of the cover, the temptation of sea creatures, explorations of identity. Overall, it was an interesting collection of pieces that interested and occasionally challenged me. I can be honest enough to say that Sy Montgomery and her attempts to do something similar drives me bonkers, perhaps because I've had my fill of straight, white, middle-class women. Intersectionality and grey areas are everything. The writing is lovely; the science is usually--but not always--cleverly integrated, the perspective interesting, though occasionally so very developmentally young. I'd love to read more about what Imbler does with their life in twenty years. This book] is an incandescent and provocative exploration of worlds we often do not see, rendered with the utmost tenderness and care... providing a new framework that will forever change how we understand the world around us KAT CHOW, author of Seeing Ghosts Sabrina Imbler's latest book mingles memoir and marine biology in a tender, lucid look at the author's life refracted through the deep sea. Their essays' mesmerizing descriptions of the often mysterious lives of aquatic animals also serve as portals of inquiry into Imbler's life on land Scientific American These giant fish survived the asteroid and the Ice Age and so much more only to be wiped out by cosmically puny obstacles: our dams, our boats, our chemicals, our taste for caviar.”

This book] marks the arrival of a phenomenal writer creating an intellectual channel entirely their own, within which whales and feral goldfish swim by the enchantment, ache, and ecstasy of human life MEGHA MAJUMDAR, author of A Burning How do we place our selves in the natural world? What are the costs and gains of our attachment to it? Where would you put Sabrina Imbler's astounding book on the shelf? In a separate section, marked: Awe and Wonder PHILIP HOARE, author of Albert & the Whale Watch out for the bit where humble pet goldfish are released into open water and all hell breaks loose

My Mother and the Starving Octopus: Comparing their adolescence, their mother's journey from Taiwan to Michigan, their mutual preoccupation with the size of their bodies, and the story of the purple octopus who nurtured her egg clutch for four and a half years. This one was heart-breaking. I would be interested in either of these versions of How Far the Light Reaches, if the two had been separated: the memoir or the science. Imbler’s writing on marine biology is accessible and fascinating, so while it’s not my usual genre, I was completely pulled in. By braiding these two threads together, though, it’s more than the sum of its parts. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such 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.

Pure Life: hydrothermal vents and the deep sea yeti crab, Kiwaidae, and Imbler's time in Seattle, where they moved for an internship. They explore the parallels of space and movement between the crab and them; inhospitable space transformed by a monthly queer POC party, and dancing, the crab farming the bacteria attached to their bristles. "It is exactly suited to the life it leads." This is a miraculous, transcendental book... To write with such grace, skill, and wisdom would be impressive enough; to have done so in their first major work is truly breathtaking. Sabrina Imbler is a generational talent, and this book is a gift to us all ED YONG, author of I Contain Multitudes Imbler pulls off an impressive feat: a book about the majestic, bewildering undersea world that also happens to be deeply human Vogue The personal reveries frequently cross the subtle line between candour and solipsism, the cute and the gauche, artlessness and shallowness, sincerity and cringeworthiness. Instances of romantic awakening, admissions of self-loathing, explorations of sexuality and contemplations of racial identity (Imbler is mixed race) convey personal pain but ultimately don’t strike home with much force or edge. One exception is a powerful chapter called Beware the Sand Striker, which combines a study of predators’ strategies in the natural world with incidents of male violence and harassment in the author’s own life, as well as those reported in public #MeToo testimonies. I loved this. A double helix of queer memoir and marine biology that twists together beautifully MARK HADDONImbler writes magnificent essays about being queer in a straight world, being mixed race in a white world, being gender queer in a binary world, and relates the sometimes elusive experiences and intractable challenges through the mysterious lives of creatures who come from deep in the sea. Imbler tries to bridge the worlds she straddles with her existence and her writing, using the animals' colorful lives, fruits of creative genetics. Each of the essays is about another lesson on survival and adaption that Imbler sees reflected in the history of her life, and in the wild of the ocean.