As someone who has had the luxury of taking their identity for granted, it was the exposing authenticity of Imbler’s personal journey that gripped me most. The descriptions of their fluctuating sense of gender, their desire to transform their body and the joy of finding their queer family were lyrical and profound. Profound, surprising, and thrillingly strange. I love it SY MONTGOMERY, author of The Soul of an Octopus This far-reaching, unique collection shatters our preconceptions about the sea and what it means to survive.

A young queer science writer on some of the ocean's strangest creatures and what they can teach us about human empathy and survivalMy 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.

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 I also thought thematically the connections between the sea creatures and Imbler's life didn't quite resonate. Although I loved the idea of combining these two disparate genres, the execution didn't work for me. That said, I learned a lot of cool stuff about the ocean and its inhabitants that I won't forget and I appreciated getting this information from a queer feminist mixed race perspective. I would have liked a book that was just that better, I think.Working at the nexus of nature writing and memoir, Sabrina Imbler is beautifully reinventing both genres ANGELA CHEN, author of ACE A singular memoir revealing what we can learn about empathy from odd beasties living in hostile environments i I admit that I feel bad that I didn't like this as much as everyone else did. I really loved the first two essays. I loved all the essays, really. It's having them all in one book that was not really for me. 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. Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender... A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things

My Grandmother and the Sturgeon: Weaving together the endangered Chinese sturgeon and its home in the Yangtze river, her grandmother and her family's escape from the Japanese in Shanghai. This one was quite close to perfect, much like a double-strand DNA. Each story parallels the other. Imbler, a science journalist, shines a light on some of the ocean's most delightful and overlooked creatures... the author draws connections between these fascinating animals and our own needs and desires - for safety, family and more New York Times As a mixed Chinese and white non-binary writer working in a largely white, male field, science 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.

I think my expectations for this book of hybrid memoir / essays was a bit too high, so I ended up being disappointed. Although I enjoyed both aspects of Imbler's writing -- science journalism about interesting sea creatures and personal stories about their queer identity and experiences -- the essays felt like two alternating threads that weren't well integrated.