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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support Parnassus Books!
Shop nowHow Far the Light Reaches
A Life in Ten Sea Creatures
Narrator
Sabrina Imbler
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Length
5 hours 40 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler is badass. I never thought I'd walk away from a collection of essays about weird sea creatures with a more crystal-clear understanding of my own gender identity than I have had in years—but curious readers live to be surprised! In winding personal essay with science writing, Imbler gifts the reader with a complex analysis of intersecting identities of race, queerness, and more. And in doing so, Imbler holds our hands through the turbulence as they bend the imaginary binaries of sex and gender and the line between truth and metaphor, all while queering the form of the personal essay. In one of the most powerful entries of the collection, Imbler invites queer and POC youth and adults to submit their own essays, and weaves them into a dazzling spectrum boasting the forms of existence and possibilities open to us. By the end of this collection, I was sobbing, but in a very a good way.”
— Wulfe • Raven Book Store
Bookseller recommendation
“Part memoir, part nature/science writing, this is an amazing book. The author's ability to weave together the wonders of marine biology with stories exploring their own existence and coming of age lets us experience the world in a different light. Original and thought-provoking. Looking for a good audio book to listen to? This is a great choice, read by the author!”
— Anne • Newtonville Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Imbler’s full-length debut is as much about their personal evolution as a queer, mixed race writer as it is an exploration of the deep sea creatures whose eccentricities inspire them. Imbler's tender approach and tactile prose toggles between expansive aquatic research and personal experiences, expanding the portrait of our world as we know it and providing hope, an ember of light in the expansive miles of darkness below the ocean's surface.”
— Ri • House of Books
A fascinating tour of creatures from the surface to the deepest ocean floor: this "miraculous, transcendental book" invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live (Ed Yong, author of An Immense World).
A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation 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. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including:
·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, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena),
·the common goldfish that flourishes in the wild,
·and more.
Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE in SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award One of TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • A PEOPLE Best New Book • A Barnes & Noble and SHELF AWARENESS Best Book of 2022 • An Indie Next Pick • One of Winter’s Most Eagerly Anticipated Books: VANITY FAIR, VULTURE, BOOKRIOT
Sabrina Imbler is a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn. Their first chapbook, Dyke (geology) was published by Black Lawrence Press. They have received fellowships and scholarships from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Tin House, the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, Millay Arts, and Paragraph NY, and their work has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation. Their essays and reporting have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Catapult, and Sierra, among others.
Sabrina Imbler is a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn. Their first chapbook, Dyke (geology) was published by Black Lawrence Press. They have received fellowships and scholarships from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Tin House, the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, Millay Arts, and Paragraph NY, and their work has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation. Their essays and reporting have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Catapult, and Sierra, among others.
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Reviews
“Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender, How Far the Light Reaches asks the reader to sink down, slip beneath, swim forward with outstretched hands, trusting that Sabrina Imbler is there to guide us through the dark. It presents the body as one that might morph and grow in any number of directions. How do we see ourselves? Can we learn to unsee? A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent.”—KRISTEN ARNETT, NYT bestselling author of With Teeth “How Far the Light Reaches draws startling, moving connections between the lives of sea creatures and our existence on solid ground; between the vast depths of the ocean and the similarly mysterious expanse of inner experience. Working at the nexus of nature writing and memoir, Sabrina Imbler is beautifully reinventing both genres."—ANGELA CHEN, author of ACE “This is a miraculous, transcendental book. Across these essays, Imbler has choreographed a dance of metaphor between the wonders of the ocean’s creatures and the poignancy of human experience, each enriching the other in surprising and profound ways. To write with such grace, skill, and wisdom would be impressive enough; to have done so in their first major work is truly breathtaking. Sabrina Imbler is a generational talent, and this book is a gift to us all.”—ED YONG, New York Times Bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes “How Far the Light Reaches marks the arrival of a phenomenal writer creating an intellectual channel entirely their own, within which whales and feral goldfish swim by the enchantment, ache, and ecstasy of human life.”—MEGHA MAJUMDAR, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning “How Far the Light Reaches is a creature unlike any other—one that grips you with its tentacles and pulls you down into new depths. It is impossible to read this book and not be transformed.”—RACHEL E. GROSS, author of Vagina Obscura "A pinwheel of awe spinning one 'wow' after another."—SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA, author of How to Pronounce Knife Expand reviews
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