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My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women
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.
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.
272 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 20, 2025
Christina Rivera writes with poetic precision and fearless honesty, crafting every sentence with intention and care. Every.single.sentence in this book is stunning and intentional!!! Her voice moves fluidly between the personal and the collective—inviting us into stories of motherhood, loss, and womanhood while drawing unflinching parallels to the grief of a world in ecological crisis. She gives voice to the natural world in a way that feels both urgent and sacred, reminding us of our deep entanglement with it. She has written a soul-stirring invocation that encourages us to feel more deeply, and to live awake. It’s one of those rare reads that brings you back home to yourself and reminds you of your greater responsibility to non-human world. Give it to everyone you know!!!!
August 19, 2025
I was very much looking forward to Christina Rivera's essay collection "My Oceans." I was wondering if it might be similar in tone to Diane Ackerman's or Elisabeth Tova Bailey's writing. Sadly, I was disappointed. While Rivera has a wealth of knowledge to share, and has lived and worked in some incredible locations, her concerns for the environment appear to border on obsessive and are almost off-putting.
Our planet is threatened; this is a fact proven by scientists. Climate change is destroying habitats and ecosystems, some may be beyond repair. The state of the planet is something everyone should be concerned about, and I do feel that everyone should do their part to preserve as many of our natural resources as possible. Thus, I and my family try to produce as little permanent waste as possible. We recycle; we reuse as much as we can. We are not perfect, and there is probably more we can do. I do wonder what kind of world my great grandchildren will inherit. I do not, however, wake up with nightmares about the micro plastics that are in my drinking water. I buy my children and grandchildren plastic brick building sets and do not flagellate myself with guilt for months after the fact.
Christina Rivera is a talented writer, and her prose is well-worded. However, her anxiety absolutely leaps off the pages and takes attention away from her message. I finished her book, but it was a struggle, and felt a palpable sense of relief when I finished it. I do recommend this book, but I advise readers to step away from it every so often not because of the subject matter (though Rivera does share some truly gut-wrenching heartache and I honestly felt for her), but to just take a breather from her stress.
Our planet is threatened; this is a fact proven by scientists. Climate change is destroying habitats and ecosystems, some may be beyond repair. The state of the planet is something everyone should be concerned about, and I do feel that everyone should do their part to preserve as many of our natural resources as possible. Thus, I and my family try to produce as little permanent waste as possible. We recycle; we reuse as much as we can. We are not perfect, and there is probably more we can do. I do wonder what kind of world my great grandchildren will inherit. I do not, however, wake up with nightmares about the micro plastics that are in my drinking water. I buy my children and grandchildren plastic brick building sets and do not flagellate myself with guilt for months after the fact.
Christina Rivera is a talented writer, and her prose is well-worded. However, her anxiety absolutely leaps off the pages and takes attention away from her message. I finished her book, but it was a struggle, and felt a palpable sense of relief when I finished it. I do recommend this book, but I advise readers to step away from it every so often not because of the subject matter (though Rivera does share some truly gut-wrenching heartache and I honestly felt for her), but to just take a breather from her stress.
November 17, 2025
Every essay in Rivera’s beautiful, thought-provoking book is a gem. And a provocation to love and steward and fight for the human and more-than-human world we’re so good at destroying. Lyrical meditation, environmental activism, political manifesto, personal essay—Rivera’s writing seamlessly blends all these forms of inquiry into a rich narrative. In her life as well as her writing, being a mother, a diver, an activist, and a writer braid together into a kind of ethical practice. To read Rivera is to participate in that practice and be inspired to take it beyond the page, into our own lives.
In our age of climate crisis and the resurgence of authoritarianism, coupled with what Amitav Ghosh calls “the great derangement,” our collective denial, paralysis, and even enabling of these coupled crises, books like Rivera’s are a necessary call to stay awake, to keep caring and fighting, to commit and collaborate with others who also can’t sit back and stay deranged. The essays that stood out to me in particular included “Empty the Tanks,” on the violence done to Corky, the sixty-year-old captive orca still circling her chlorinated tank at SeaWorld; “My Oceans,” on Rivera’s fantasy (which I share) of escaping to join Sea Shepherd, a direct-action marine conservation organization; and “Hidden Geographies,” a reckoning with the way we’re deeply enmeshed in the consumption of plastics and other toxic products of our culture, and how we pass that on to our children. As an ocean swimmer and diver, deeply resonant for me too was Rivera’s perspective as a scuba diver, her ability to narrate the ocean not only from land but from within, where she is witness to the astonishing life of the ocean and also its astonishing depletion.
In our age of climate crisis and the resurgence of authoritarianism, coupled with what Amitav Ghosh calls “the great derangement,” our collective denial, paralysis, and even enabling of these coupled crises, books like Rivera’s are a necessary call to stay awake, to keep caring and fighting, to commit and collaborate with others who also can’t sit back and stay deranged. The essays that stood out to me in particular included “Empty the Tanks,” on the violence done to Corky, the sixty-year-old captive orca still circling her chlorinated tank at SeaWorld; “My Oceans,” on Rivera’s fantasy (which I share) of escaping to join Sea Shepherd, a direct-action marine conservation organization; and “Hidden Geographies,” a reckoning with the way we’re deeply enmeshed in the consumption of plastics and other toxic products of our culture, and how we pass that on to our children. As an ocean swimmer and diver, deeply resonant for me too was Rivera’s perspective as a scuba diver, her ability to narrate the ocean not only from land but from within, where she is witness to the astonishing life of the ocean and also its astonishing depletion.
February 5, 2025
How to describe this book? How to provide a short summary?
Rivera’s writing is like her surname, a riverbank, with water always in sight, always at hand, the fauna and the flora, the ecosystems living in harmony, the sounds echoing in their natural rhythm.
This is one of the best essay books and one of the few on the junction of climate science and motherhood that I have ever read.
Rivera’s writing style and how she shapes her essays into stories that connect and inform each other are impressive.
She masterfully blends topics involving the ecosystems, the climate crisis, the collective errrs when we see someone subject to violence and injustice, grief, her anecdotes, important facts about whales and oceans and gives us this relevant. engaging and important book.
Any minor and brief disengagement for a smaller part of a much larger topic, maybe a couple of paragraphs or so were due to my own disinterest. Even in those moments, I kept reading, and had a reflective, informing, illuminating experience.
Rivera’s wonderful at her craft and she is able to evoke emotion, and invite the reader to critical and analytical thinking without the tediousness of fact heavy writing.
Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Rivera’s writing is like her surname, a riverbank, with water always in sight, always at hand, the fauna and the flora, the ecosystems living in harmony, the sounds echoing in their natural rhythm.
This is one of the best essay books and one of the few on the junction of climate science and motherhood that I have ever read.
Rivera’s writing style and how she shapes her essays into stories that connect and inform each other are impressive.
She masterfully blends topics involving the ecosystems, the climate crisis, the collective errrs when we see someone subject to violence and injustice, grief, her anecdotes, important facts about whales and oceans and gives us this relevant. engaging and important book.
Any minor and brief disengagement for a smaller part of a much larger topic, maybe a couple of paragraphs or so were due to my own disinterest. Even in those moments, I kept reading, and had a reflective, informing, illuminating experience.
Rivera’s wonderful at her craft and she is able to evoke emotion, and invite the reader to critical and analytical thinking without the tediousness of fact heavy writing.
Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
March 4, 2025
You know those books that when you sense you’re nearing the end, you take a minute and just hold the book to your chest, keeping yourself from finishing the story for just a little while longer? The books that make you sad that they’re over when you finally do close them? This is one of those.
This book of essays is part climate science, part memoir and it’s just beautiful.
Rivera takes the powerful love we know as mothers and turns it toward the sea. It’s evident that both of these loves are ones experienced divemaster and mother of two, Rivera, knows well.
Each essay is in turn fun to read, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. In a time when it’s easy to zoom out and ignore the world around us in favor of daily tasks or doom scrolling, Rivera’s essays caused me to zoom back in and take a hard look. A couple of them made me feel like I’d just gotten the wind knocked out of me.
The result, for me, is a feeling that won’t leave my chest just yet.
It’s a good thing then, that I can tell that these are stories I will visit again and again as I continue to contemplate what it means to mother during a time of climate crisis (and explore my newfound love and appreciation of manta rays!)
This book of essays is part climate science, part memoir and it’s just beautiful.
Rivera takes the powerful love we know as mothers and turns it toward the sea. It’s evident that both of these loves are ones experienced divemaster and mother of two, Rivera, knows well.
Each essay is in turn fun to read, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. In a time when it’s easy to zoom out and ignore the world around us in favor of daily tasks or doom scrolling, Rivera’s essays caused me to zoom back in and take a hard look. A couple of them made me feel like I’d just gotten the wind knocked out of me.
The result, for me, is a feeling that won’t leave my chest just yet.
It’s a good thing then, that I can tell that these are stories I will visit again and again as I continue to contemplate what it means to mother during a time of climate crisis (and explore my newfound love and appreciation of manta rays!)
March 20, 2025
I am in awe at how flawlessly this author has woven experiences from her life and the relatable heartstrings of motherhood and/or pregnancy loss, and womanhood and daily threats associated into empathy and voice for the suffering occurring from the climate crisis, and the neglect of acknowledgment and action against it. It is deeply personal, both her experiences in the book, and what we’re doing to the Earth. However, I’m shocked that it is NOT a depressing/discouraging book, moreso eyeopening, comforting, relieving to have someone put to words the emotions from your own heart. This compilation of essays is the kind of resensitizing the world needs. It has awakened me to live each moment with more meaning, more empathy and compassion, more depth, more awareness. Phenomenal compilation, do not skip on this purchase. Christina Rivera has entered the room, make WAY.
December 30, 2025
What I loved most is how the author weaves science, story and soul without trying to tidy any of it up. This isn’t a book about conquering the ocean or understanding it fully—it’s about listening. About being humbled. About letting yourself be changed by what you love and what you’re willing to protect.
As a woman, as someone who feels deeply connected to land and water, to breath and rhythm, this book felt like a mirror. It asks you to consider your own relationship to the natural world, to motherhood (in all its forms), to grief, to devotion.
This book will stay with you.
As a woman, as someone who feels deeply connected to land and water, to breath and rhythm, this book felt like a mirror. It asks you to consider your own relationship to the natural world, to motherhood (in all its forms), to grief, to devotion.
This book will stay with you.
July 25, 2025
My Oceans is a gorgeous book that takes you on a journey of loss and hope. It inspires personal reflection and positive action and is an essential read for anybody who cares about the natural world!
April 21, 2025
Beautiful, lyrical and deeply thought provoking. I re-read a number of these essays to let their depth sink in. I would highly recommend.
May 15, 2025
I’m giving this book to all the women in my life!!
May 25, 2025
A few images from these essays haunt me. These are stories of motherhood, climate grief, whales. Some essays hit me more than others, but the ones that did hit me with a punch in the gut.
January 24, 2026
Rivera excels in depicting the depth of emotion of the animal world -- the orca Tahlequah carrying and pushing her dead baby up to the surface for 17 days in "The Seventeenth Day" and Corky, a captive orca in Seaworld who smashes the aquarium glass after her baby dies in "Empty the Tanks". Her book helps us perceive the grief of other living beings that have resulted from our damage to the environment, and encounter our own loss at how the world is changing-- one that will be born more by our children than by us.
Rivera's words spoke to me deeply-- an exhortation to grieve the loss (already and more in the future), embrace the uncertainty, and retain hope that we can still sustain what matters most.
Rivera's words spoke to me deeply-- an exhortation to grieve the loss (already and more in the future), embrace the uncertainty, and retain hope that we can still sustain what matters most.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews