Staff Pick
A fascinating and deeply moving nonfiction debut by an award-winning poet. This fragmentary examination of tears expertly mixes poetic thought, science, and the author's own relationship to sadness, joy, and crying. Everyone who has ever cried should read this book. Recommended By Kevin S., Powells.com
To say this is a book about crying would be like saying simply the ocean is about water. It contains within its impressionistic passages equally deep, blue meditations on friendship, motherhood, poetry, war; the prose holds the compact power of a single tear. This book is like crying, as much as it is about crying. It wells up and chokes back and comes on suddenly, unexpected. You will feel better for having gone through it. Recommended By Thomas L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"This is a wonderful and profound look at the act of crying — something human and yet hidden, common and yet mysterious. I found myself reading with a thirst for the tears Heather Christle collects here — instances within literature, film, history, and the author's own life all add up to a greater understanding of what makes us human." Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
Why do we cry? How do we cry? And what does it mean? A scientific, cultural, artistic examination by a young poet on the cusp of motherhood.
Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen-tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women's tears play in racist violence.
Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle's investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.
Review
"An eclectic reflection on human waterworks . . . The unconventional format, combined with the author's vast survey of the topic, provides fascinating food for thought. A surprisingly hopeful meditation on why we shed tears." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Readers are sure to be moved to tears themselves. This is a lovely meditation on life and death through the lens of tears, both those spurred by grief and those by joy." Booklist
Review
"In The Crying Book, Heather Christle makes a poignant and piercing examination of the phenomenon of tears — exhaustive, yes, but also open-ended, such that I was left clutching this book to my chest with wonder, asking myself when the last time was that I cried, and why. A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book." Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
Review
"The Crying Book is spellbinding and propulsive — the map of a luminous mind in conversation with books, songs, friends, scientific theories, literary histories, her own jagged joy, and despair. Heather Christle is a visionary writer." Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
About the Author
Heather Christle is author of the poetry collections The Difficult Farm (2009); The Trees The Trees (2011), which won the Believer Poetry Award; What Is Amazing (2012); and Heliopause (2015). A former creative writing fellow in poetry at Emory University, Christle's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, and many other journals. She was born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and earned a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has taught at Wittenberg University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Guelph, and other institutions. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.