Why read The Crying Book?

Book cover of The Crying Book

Book description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"A poignant and piercing examination of the phenomenon of tears—exhaustive, yes, but also open-ended. . . A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book." —Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias

"Spellbinding and propulsive—the map of a luminous mind in conversation with books, songs, friends, scientific theories, literary…

Explore

Topics

Coming soon!

Genres

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

2 authors picked The Crying Book as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Marin Sardy

Author

This lyrical, book-length essay is a meditation not so much on a diagnosis as on one of its most visible expressions—tears. Exploring depression through the lens of the phenomenon of crying, The Crying Book is loaded with facts both esoteric and banal. Yet it is also deeply personalized by author Heather Christle’s reflections on her own struggles with depressive episodes, as well as on the deaths of other poets to suicide, and the allure and danger of romanticizing such acts. Christle’s loose, fragmentary approach gives her the freedom to wander far and wide as she considers the art and act…

From Marin's list on The best empowering personal stories of mental illness.

Christie Tate

Author

I’m a huge crier—when the birds over the Lake look beautiful, when my kids sing on key, when I imagine the passing of my favorite musician, Willie Nelson—so this meditation on tears and crying spoke straight to my soul. Christle expertly weaves her own struggles with the science, art, and cultural history of crying. This book is strangely perfect.

From Christie's list on The best books if you want to read the messy, brutal, glorious truth of women’s bodies and their lives.