這鹹鹹的淚水，承載與呢喃了什麼？
詩意而跨領域的書寫，從科學、文化、藝術探索哭泣與淚水，觸碰人內心最柔軟而脆弱的角落。
得獎詩人Heather Christle失去了一位自殺而逝的好友，而初為人母的人生轉折，也讓她無所適從，被產後憂鬱症圍困。面對悲傷，她用理解作為走出幽谷的逃生口，投身研究關於「哭泣」的一切──它是什麼，人們又為何哭泣，即便我們顯少討論它。研究的旅程帶領她發現了許多──藝術家設計出了一把「淚水槍」，把冷凍凝結的淚水化作子彈、一種以動物的淚水為食的蛾，她研究古希臘羅馬人使用的淚壺(lachrymatory)，讓悲傷者收集他們留下的淚水，也探索在種族暴力之下，女性的淚水扮演什麼角色，又或我們淚水三種不同的物質組成，與抽噎與嚎哭的差異…
匯聚這些與淚水相繫的題材，摻入自己的經歷，結合成這本獨特作品，讓讀者吸收知識，也喚起沉思；篇幅或長或短，有些可能只有寥寥幾句或一頁，創造出浪潮般的閱讀體驗，但彼此的轉折卻流暢緊繫，成為讓人舒適甚至放鬆的沉靜時光。關於哭泣與淚水的一切，與作者濃稠的憂傷流淌於文字中，卻不讓人覺得窒息，讓我們靜靜咀嚼生命、失去、心理創傷。The Crying Book是作者首次的非虛構寫作，誠懇、機敏、情感豐沛而充滿驚奇，向淚水令人著迷的獨特性，以及快樂讓人意想不到的韌性致意。（文/博客來編譯）
「這是一本美妙而深刻的作品，溫柔地陪伴讀者審視「哭泣」──與人性深繫，卻被掩藏；如此尋常，但充滿神祕的存在。 我沉溺於作者撿拾起的關於淚水的各種碎塊──文學中的描繪、電影、歷史、作者生命的故事──拼湊成我們生而為人的意義。」──作家Chelsea Hodson
“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
Praise for The Crying Book
One of Publishers Weeklys Top Ten Books in Lifestyle in Fall 2019
Bustle, 1 of 11 New Memoirs for Your Fall Reading List
"An eclectic reflection on human waterworks . . . The unconventional format, combined with the authors vast survey of the topic, provides fascinating food for thought. A surprisingly hopeful meditation on why we shed tears." ─Kirkus
"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
"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." ─Esme Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
"Heather Christles new book is a combination of personal musings about depression, childbirth, and motherhood, and fascinating researched tidbits about crying─its history, its use in literature and pop culture, its politics, and the science behind it all. Basically, its Maggie Nelsons Bluets, but about crying, and its every bit as dazzling as the stars that dot its cover." ─Cristina Arreola, Bustle, 1 of 36 New Books of the Season You Need to Have on Your Autumn Reading List
"This is a book about crying, yes, but secretly it’s a book about everything: pain, sleep, joy, despair, birth, art, exile, atrocity, language, weather, fish. Christle’s genius─a word I’ve never before written to describe a living author─is her ability to see the miraculous and strange lines connecting everything to everything: neither parallel nor perpendicular, she writes, but simply arcs that momentarily intersect before traveling on. The Crying Book is a rigorous and urgent work, but it reads like an intimate gift." ─Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf
"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
“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
“The Crying Book is a portrait of our time, as perceived through Christle’s unique and electric mind. She moves through the scientific and the personal, exploring grief, friendship, and motherhood with eloquence, originality, and poetry. It seems clear there is a cosmic wound that rubs in our unconscious, which Christle investigates in an unflappable yet utterly compassionate voice. She is singular in her skills as a writer, thinker, and human being.” ─Bianca Stone, author of Someone Elses Wedding Vows
Praise for Heather Christle
“Heather Christle is a visionary writer, deeply intelligent and wildly compassionate, one of our most gifted chroniclers of the strange joys of being alive.” ─Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
“Heather Christle’s mind is supple and incandescent. Her curiosity appears to be bottomless, her tenderness inexhaustible. She has a joyous way of making the people around her pay attention, of making her readers attend not just to what she is saying but to the neglected wonders of their days. She vivifies life.” ─Noy Holland, author of Bird
