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 non-human species and proposes that gathering in collective grief is essential amid the sixth mass extinction on Earth. 

For ecofeminists, fans of Terry Tempest Williams and Rachel Carson—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.

MY OCEANS was longlisted for the 2022 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a finalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and includes the 2022 John Burrough’s Nature Essay Award winner as well as essays first published in Orion Magazine, Terrain.org, The Kenyon Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthologies, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Catapult, and more.