The Crying Book - Heather Christle

Category: Adults, Poetry
Language: English
Keywords: Essays Mental Health

Written by Heather Christle
Read by Elizabeth Cottle
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

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.

Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
Release date: 05-12-20