Scan barcode
Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler
118 reviews
yajairat's review
5.0
The essays were a beautiful mix of informative and personal. I like the fact that Imbler switched between the story of the sea creature and their own story every paragraph. Think it kept it nicely separated, but still saw the connections between them. They had some really poignant reflections on their youth, identity, sexuality, and big life events. Teared up at times not gonna lie!! One of my favorite reads of the year.
"In the animal kingdom, there are two ways to be a mother. Some animals can reproduce multiple times in the span of a life, others just once.... creatures like octopuses have no such maternal privileges. Their single shot at reproduction produces hundreds or thousands of babies, stacking the odds that at least a few will make it out alive... the octopus mother cannot leave her post to hunt. She survives on the stored energy of her body. She will never again see another place; this is her last view." - from the story "My Mother and the Starving Octopus", where a female octopus will starve herself while tending to her eggs, and dies once they hatch.
"I realize now that my mother's wish for me to be thin was, in its way, an act of love. She wanted me to be skinny so things would be easier. White, so things would be easier. Straight, so things would be easy, easy, easy. So that, unlike her, no one would ever question my right to be here, in America. I just wish I could tell her I've been okay without those things, that I've actually been better without them. I wish she would stop wanting those things too." - from "My Mother and the Starving Octopus"
"I predict I will always be in negotiation with my body, what it wants, and what I want of it."
"These animals eked out an alternative way of life. I prefer to think of it not as a last resort but as a radical act of choosing what nourishes you. As queer people, we get to choose our families. Vent bacteria, tube works, and yeti crabs just take it one step further." - from "Pure Life"
"I felt confused about why she never left, surrounded by the ghosts of the abuse and the trial and the hounding by the press. But I also understand the security that comes when you know a place and its ghosts. When you have seen the worst of it and survived." - from "Beware of the Sand Striker", Lorena Bobbitt's story and the bobbit worm that was named after her trauma
"Though prey can be caught off guard, can be surprised, can even be ambushed, prey is never truly unsuspecting. It has evolved the blueprint of its body in response to, or in anticipation of, trauma."
"Almost every system we exist in is cruel, and it is our job to hold ourselves accountable to a moral center separate from the arbitrary ganglion of laws that, so often, get things wrong. This is the work we inherit as creatures with a complex brain, which comes with inexplicable joys, like love and sex and making out in cars, but also the duty of empathy, of understanding what it means when someone is stumbling"
"Trauma is not just a catalyst to regeneration; it is the only catalyst"
"Maybe these moments teach me that this joy does not come from being around people who look like you but from people who are irritated in the same ways. Maybe home is the people who hear your rants and nod, because they know. Maybe complaining to someone who gets it is one of the purest comforts on Earth. Maybe it is less about our shared backgrounds than it is about our shared irritations, obsessions, grievances, fears, resentments. - from "Hybrids"
Moderate: Eating disorder and Sexual assault
Minor: Racial slurs
threepigeons's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Eating disorder and Sexual assault
elsakern's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Sexual assault, Alcoholism, and Eating disorder
jazhandz's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Sexual assault, Animal death, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Alcoholism, Racism, Dysphoria, Body shaming, Sexual content, and War
Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicidal thoughts, Homophobia, and Racial slurs
crackhead_bex's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Sexual assault and Eating disorder
lettuce_read's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Racism and Homophobia
throwback682's review against another edition
5.0
Perhaps it’s a string of long strange similes that forces you to re-examine your assumptions about both marine life and humans.
How does a book flow seamlessly from Lorena Bobbitt to Brock Turner to dead whales to immortal jellyfish? From strap-ons to gender dysphoria to biracial identities to crabs huddled together on the edge of a volcanic vent at the bottom of the ocean? From mother octopuses starving to death for their babies to alcoholism to rape? From the NYC dyke march and the queer history of a tuberculosis hospital to cuttlefish camouflage? It shouldn’t all be able to fit in one book but it does and it’s spectacular. Example: at one point they perform a necropsy on an early queer relationship after a breakup.
I had to take breaks during some of the heavier subject matter and you should definitely check the trigger warnings but for me it was well worth the pain. What a brilliant piece of art. The synergy of all the myriad pieces of this book is extremely powerful.
Graphic: Animal death, Sexual assault, Alcoholism, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Animal cruelty, War, Xenophobia, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic
TW: victim blaming, sexual assaultlue_moon's review against another edition
5.0
Most resonant for me were "My Mother and the Starving Octopus," "Morphing Like a Cuttlefish" and "Us Everlasting."
Graphic: Eating disorder and Sexual assault
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Fatphobia, and Transphobia
oversherin's review against another edition
4.0
Moderate: Eating disorder, Xenophobia, and Sexual assault
kaydee_reads's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Eating disorder
Moderate: Sexual assault, Homophobia, Fatphobia, War, Lesbophobia, and Toxic relationship