How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Sabrina Imbler assesses the links we can find between human and marine life in their exquisite debut collection of essays. From a mother octopus to a wild goldfish, Imbler's essays showcase the remarkable displays of survival from our friends under the sea.

A fascinating tour of creatures from the surface to the deepest ocean floor: this "miraculous, transcendental book" invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live (Ed Yong, author of An Immense World).

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation 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, including:

   ·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, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena),

   ·the common goldfish that flourishes in the wild,

   ·and more.

Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.  

WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE in SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award One of TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year•   A PEOPLE Best New Book •   A Barnes & Noble and SHELF AWARENESS Best Book of 2022  •  An Indie Next Pick  •  One of Winter’s Most Eagerly Anticipated Books: VANITY FAIR, VULTURE, BOOKRIOT

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316540537
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/06/2022
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	75,879
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sabrina Imbler is a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn. Their first chapbook, Dyke (geology) was published by Black Lawrence Press. They have received fellowships and scholarships from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Tin House, the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, Millay Arts, and Paragraph NY, and their work has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation. Their essays and reporting have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Catapult, and Sierra, among others.

Table of Contents

If You Flush a Goldfish 1

My Mother and the Starving Octopus 25

My Grandmother and the Sturgeon 49

How to Draw a Sperm Whale 65

Pure Life 91

Beware the Sand Striker 113

Hybrids 145

We Swarm 167

Morphing Like a Cuttlefish 195

Us Everlasting 219

Acknowledgments 240

Sources 244

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/29/2022

In this captivating debut, science writer Imbler shines a light on the mysterious sea creatures that live in Earth’s most inhospitable reaches, drawing parallels to their own experience of adaptation and survival. In “My Mother and the Starving Octopus,” Imbler describes octopus brooding—a process during which a female starves and withers to death while protecting her eggs—and uses it as a poignant launching point to delve into the ramifications of their mother’s disordered relationship with food. In “Pure Life,” Imbler considers the yeti crab, marveling at how it survives atop hydrothermal vents, little islands of heat on the ocean floor, and recounts their own experience craving closeness: “I wanted communities that warmed me until I tingled.” Science, race, and the act of writing are at the core of the deeply personal “Hybrids,” in which Imbler describes their fixation on a butterflyfish that was the offspring of two different species and dissects their changing experience writing about race. Imbler’s ability to balance illuminating science journalism with candid personal revelation is impressive, and the mesmerizing glints of lyricism are a treat. This intimate deep dive will leave readers eager to see where Imbler goes next. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"a book that invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live."—Carrie McBride, New York Public Library

"A world-expanding book, brimming with so much: life, pain, loss, wonder."—Keziah Weir, VANITY FAIR

“Imbler is a science writer with a knack for pulling gut-wrenching meaning out of everything from Linnaean taxonomy to the carapace of a horseshoe crab washed up on a New York City beach. In this essay collection, they manage to balance science and emotion without leaning too heavily on anthropomorphizing…Some listeners might find more to love on either end of the metaphor — the science or the deeply personal narrative — but here one cannot exist without the other, and the end result reveals just as much about our fascinating, mysterious world as it does about our fascinating, mysterious selves.”—Sebastian Modak, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Lively prose about marine biology mixed with an intimate, thoughtful, emotionally affecting memoir. In How Far the Light Reaches, Imbler examines their own personal history, drawing connections between their struggles to adapt to and grow beyond life in California’s suburbs with the stories of creatures they love.”—Kate Knibbs, WIRED, The 12 Best Books of 2022

"Imbler adds to the cumulative knowledge [of sea creatures] with keen, observation-derived accounts of these critters, most of which do not comport with our standard idea of fishes. Their writing in this vein is thoroughly professional but readily accessible to lay readers."—Tim Pfaff, BAY AREA REPORTER

"Imbler shows us that the ocean, in all its mystery and dazzling glory, is queer — that is, the life that takes shape there challenges how we landlubbers perceive ways of being."—Aina Abell, SCIENCE NEWS

"Across the collection, Imbler asks us to think about how our lives mirror those of the animals around us, especially the ones who so often escape our gaze, just like the darker facets of our own personalities and histories."—LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Marine biology, cultural criticism, and memoir blend in this agile collection of essays, which brims with illuminating connections . . . Like the cuttlefish, which can change appearance ‘in a fraction of a second,’ the book has a protean quality, and the way Imbler pays attention to animals living 'an alternative way of life' without excessively anthropomorphizing them starts to seem like an ethical act."—THE NEW YORKER

"It is refreshing to be invited into the crafting of a narrative, to see how one can build upon a literature while acknowledging the need to move past it. Imbler successfully captures ambiguity without pinning it down, at a moment when science, media, and self-branding capitalism are so eager to name us...The effect may have been hokey in the hands of another writer, but Imbler never fails to demonstrate that a different way of life is possible. It’s easy to get picked up by the current of their words, and the many maybes they open up."—Mai Tran, THE RUMPUS

"Absolutely stunning."—David Martinez, THE CRITERION

"Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles."—Annalee Newitz, SCIENCE FRIDAY

From the Publisher

07/01/2022

Revealing the glories of marine life through 10 distinctive creatures, like the mother octopus who starves herself while tending her eggs, science writer Imbler then reveals their own experiences as a queer, biracial author to connect these often endangered sea creatures to marginalized human communities.

Library Journal

2022-10-11
Part memoir and part study of the intricacies of the ocean, this exploration invites readers to imagine alternative ways of living.

In a book that is much more than an account of deep-sea creatures, journalist Imbler compellingly examines the parallels between the lives and priorities of people and aquatic animals. The author’s ability to locate connections across seemingly disparate topics—e.g., their experience with sexual assault and the life of a 10-foot-long worm called a sand striker—is both unique and engaging. Occasionally, Imbler’s juxtaposition of marine and human life feels forced, but the overall effect is heartening and encourages a reexamination of inherited ideas about family, community, and identity. Offering sometimes-graphic descriptions of the ways in which humankind has chemically altered or thoughtlessly killed individual creatures and entire species, Imbler does not shy away from highlighting the impact of the devastating effects of climate change on the mysterious inhabitants of the sea. Among the fascinating creatures the author profiles are octopus; cuttlefish; the Chinese sturgeon, “which resembles something from a past world, when scaled giants roamed the earth and the continents still clung together”; and yeti crabs, whose “inhospitable” environment, 7,000 feet below the surface, “is nothing to be pitied. The pressure does not crush the crab, and the darkness does not oppress it.” Woven throughout the author’s colorful depictions of underwater animals are equally vivid chronicles of the difficulties they have faced in their life, including disordered eating, sexual assault, racism, homophobia, and more. “Like a dutiful little trash compactor,” they write, “I had digested my messy heap of an identity into a manageable lesson for people who were not like me.” Imbler’s thoughtful presentation of their identity manages to be educational without being didactic, and their entertaining anecdotes about some bizarre animals and their behavior recalls Ed Yong’s An Immense World.

Elegant, thought-provoking comparisons between aspects of identity and the trials of deep-sea creatures.

Kirkus Reviews

How Far the Light Reaches is a creature unlike any other—one that grips you with its tentacles and pulls you down into new depths. It is impossible to read this book and not be transformed.

author of Vagina Obscura RACHEL E. GROSS

This is a miraculous, transcendental book. Across these essays, Imbler has choreographed a dance of metaphor between the wonders of the ocean’s creatures and the poignancy of human experience, each enriching the other in surprising and profound ways. 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

A pinwheel of awe spinning one 'wow' after another.

author of How to Pronounce Knife SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA

Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender, How Far the Light Reaches asks the reader to sink down, slip beneath, swim forward with outstretched hands, trusting that Sabrina Imbler is there to guide us through the dark. It presents the body as one that might morph and grow in any number of directions. How do we see ourselves? Can we learn to unsee? A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent.

NYT bestselling author of With Teeth KRISTEN ARNETT

“How Far the Light Reaches 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.

New York Times bestselling author of A Burning MEGHA MAJUMDAR

This is a miraculous, transcendental book. Across these essays, Imbler has choreographed a dance of metaphor between the wonders of the ocean’s creatures and the poignancy of human experience, each enriching the other in surprising and profound ways. 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.

New York Times Bestselling author of I Contain Mul ED YONG

Science journalist Sabrina Imbler narrates their own work, exploring the lives of deep-sea creatures and drawing parallels to their own experiences as a queer, biracial person seeking a community of their own. Imbler invites listeners to share in their fascination as they describe 10 unique sea creatures—from yeti crabs, who live precariously on hydrothermal vents, to the mother octopus who starved for 53 months while protecting her eggs. Imbler draws piercing and sometimes painful connections to their own life, describing their experiences with disordered eating, sexual assault, racism, and homophobia. While some of the creatures Imbler describes may seem bizarre—translucent orb-like salps, feral goldfish that grow to menacing proportions—their heartfelt narration ensures that listeners will recognize the beauty in them all. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Science journalist Sabrina Imbler narrates their own work, exploring the lives of deep-sea creatures and drawing parallels to their own experiences as a queer, biracial person seeking a community of their own. Imbler invites listeners to share in their fascination as they describe 10 unique sea creatures—from yeti crabs, who live precariously on hydrothermal vents, to the mother octopus who starved for 53 months while protecting her eggs. Imbler draws piercing and sometimes painful connections to their own life, describing their experiences with disordered eating, sexual assault, racism, and homophobia. While some of the creatures Imbler describes may seem bizarre—translucent orb-like salps, feral goldfish that grow to menacing proportions—their heartfelt narration ensures that listeners will recognize the beauty in them all. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile