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The Crying Book

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The Crying Book Synopsis

'A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book' Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias 'Spellbinding and propulsive' Leni Zeumas, author of Red Clocks '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 A DAZZLING MEDITATION ON TEARS In this symphonic work of non-fiction, Heather Christle explores the most human of behaviours: crying. What are tears made of? Why do people cry? And why is this common, crucial act so rarely discussed? Christle unpacks the biological reasons for tears and investigates the influence of crying on art, politics, feminism, race and culture, all while opening up the intimate story of her own tears - from the suicide of her close friend to her family's history of depression, to her pregnancies, both planned and unplanned. In these pages, we meet a feminist artist who designs a gun that shoots frozen tears. A moth that takes sustenance from feeding on the tears shed by other animals. And beautifully impractical devices for dealing with grief such as the 'lachrymatory', an ancient receptacle into which it was hoped 'a mourner could let fall her hot tears'. While Christle enchants us with poetic snippets on these subjects, a powerful investigation begins to accrue, examining how the history of tears is tied up with racist violence, with the stigma of mental illness, and with the ways in which glib contemporary images of motherhood fail to reckon with how rich and complicated is actually is. Brilliant, witty and achingly honest, Christle's book creates a mosaic of science, history, culture and personal experience to find new ways of understanding life and loss. The Crying Book is a deeply intimate tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears - and the unexpected resilience of joy. Honest, intelligent, rapturous and surprising, The Crying Book is a poignant, personal tribute to the astonishing strangeness of tears and the startling resilience of joy.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9781472154712
Publication date: 4th February 2021
Author: Heather Christle
Publisher: Corsair an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
Format: Paperback
Pagination: 208 pages
Genres: Autobiography: writers
Psychology: emotions