My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women [Paperback]

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 nonhuman species and proposes that gathering in collective grief is essential amid the sixth mass extinction. For ecofeminists, fans of Rachel Carson and Terry Tempest Williams—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.Christina Rivera braids lyrical prose with research into endangered marine life. She explores the kinship of bodies of water and beings, ranging from her own experiences of motherhood to mantas, turtles, and whales.CHRISTINA RIVERA is a Pushcart Prize-–winning essayist from Colorado whose girlhood was bordered by coastlines of Pacific Ocean. She is a winner of the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award and a finalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. Her writing has appeared in Orion, Terrain.org, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

Named a Notable Small Press Book of 2025 byLitHub Named Best Debut We Read in 2025 by theChicago Review of Books ForewordINDIES Finalist Winner of the IPNE Gold Award in Narrative Nonfiction Finalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmelc‰