The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #142: Christina Rivera
"The literary world—without authentic accounts of motherhood—would be lonely, unfair, and dishonest."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 142nd installment, featuring , author of My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Christina Rivera is the debut author of MY OCEANS: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, March 2025). Her work has won a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award, and appeared in Orion, The Cut, The Kenyon Review, and Terrain.org, and Longreads among other places. You can learn more about Christina and My Oceans at www.christinarivera.com.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 48. When I was 9, I wrote a series of “letters to my future self” and hid them under my bed. My best friend found the letters and laughed as she read them aloud. I tore up the pages, stuffed them into the trash, and didn’t write again (for myself) until I was 22. My daughter is now 9 years old. She just started writing her first book. It’s about “a blind girl who gets lost in her imagination.” So, it’s now my job to bodyguard both of our writerly spirits.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women is the title of my debut book which was published in March. The title, My Oceans, is not possessive, but meant to shapeshift between “my vastness,” “my body of water,” “my multitudes,” and even, “my blue heart,” depending on the context, mood, and refracting light of each essay inside the book.
This book is about marine kinship. It’s about feeling the oceans and rivers and tides and streams and eddies and currents inside a mammalian body. It’s about letting the borders of self-identity disintegrate and feeling into that collective vulnerability of not being separate from our environment (or our climate crisis). And it’s about wandering around a silty sea floor of existential questions, because that feels precisely like what we should be doing in this moment on our faltering planet.
What number book is this for you?
My Oceans is my first book—and probably the only book of memoir in me. I feel, already, at the limit of my self-excavation. But I’m working on two new books, both fiction. I needed fiction to extend the canvas of what I can grapple into existence.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
In the process of writing, pitching, and publishing this book, it was called almost all those things. The borders of those categories are so blurry! At the very last minute, my press put “memoir” on the back cover of the book. And as I come, now, to terms with the depth of personal details I have, indeed, published within the pages of this book, that category feels newly accurate. But I still insist on calling it “a book of essays” and actively avoid the term “collection” which feels, to me, too haphazard.
The essays in this book were definitely beachcombed. Each one glimmered at me from the sand. I picked an essay up, and turned it over and over to see how its colors shifted in the light, and if it fit, I moved it to my pocket to mingle with the others. Importantly, each essay was tossed to my feet by the surf; both physically and metaphorically, “shaped by the sea” is the theme that links every page of the book.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
Look away publicist, editor, and agent! I don’t have an elevator pitch. Nothing boxed. Nothing with cute buttons that light up. I’m a proud and awkward introvert who would smile warmly, but stutter profoundly, if you tapped on my shoulder and inquired as to the subject of my book. If you met me in the elevator again the next day, I’d give you a different answer.
But here’s today’s answer: This book is about marine kinship. It’s about feeling the oceans and rivers and tides and streams and eddies and currents inside a mammalian body. It’s about letting the borders of self-identity disintegrate and feeling into that collective vulnerability of not being separate from our environment (or our climate crisis). And it’s about wandering around a silty sea floor of existential questions, because that feels precisely like what we should be doing in this moment on our faltering planet. The Cut recently published an adapted excerpt from My Oceans which captures this existential scream of mine.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
The first lines I wrote of this book came from a poem I started, but couldn’t finish. I wrote the poem in response to a writing prompt offered by Lidia Yuknavitch at a literary festival. I had been rejected from Lidia’s small-group writing circle by a jury. But I still attended the festival and sat in all her talks with the public. As I wrote into her prompt, the paper grew wet and dark with my tears. In the poem, I was writing into a single minute in time when I found myself standing knee-deep in the ocean, touching a porpoise that had beached itself. The animal died under my palms. (I still can’t type that sentence without crying.) My Oceans was born in that poem, and every sentence since feels to me like an extension of that boundless minute on my knees in the sea. Though the book is finished, I think I’ll forever be writing into that unfinished poem.
Pre-natal depression was also my portal to becoming a writer. Those years were a dark tunnel and I wrote my way out of them with my first published essay, “Four Circles.” That essay is now in the middle of My Oceans because it feels right, with the other pieces orbiting around it. Through birth and motherhood, I dropped into my untamed animalness. My Oceans was an act of coming to terms with the wilderness of new, mammalian-more-than-human, instincts.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
My Oceans is fragmented in shape because womanhood, for me, is fragmented. Selling a book that did not fit a traditional trajectory of narrative was the hardest aspect of getting it published. Even now, briefing people on how to read a book of essays remains challenging. I keep reassuring people: “You don’t have to read this front to back! You can start anywhere. You can put it down. You should put it down to breathe because this is a book that wants you to explore your own margins and white spaces.”
There are different ways to write and there are different ways to read. I know the literary world knows this, and I see that younger demographics are naturally inclined to get this, but sharing my book of essays—many of which are “experimental” in shape—with general reading audiences has been a learning curve (that I’m still riding)!
My Oceans is fragmented in shape because womanhood, for me, is fragmented. Selling a book that did not fit a traditional trajectory of narrative was the hardest aspect of getting it published. Even now, briefing people on how to read a book of essays remains challenging. I keep reassuring people: “You don’t have to read this front to back! You can start anywhere. You can put it down. You should put it down to breathe because this is a book that wants you to explore your own margins and white spaces.”
How did you handle writing about real people in your life?
Writing about real people was hard, not necessarily while writing, but in the process of publishing. I still lose sleep over it. I did run sections by some people. I did secure consent by others. But then I still removed some of those sections, because how do you define true consent when it involves the eternity of print? What if they were just being nice when they gave me permission? What if they change their minds about their consent?
My children are also in the book, but they are young characters and their details are all pretty charming. But again, who’s to define charming? And how does consent shift between ages 7 and 17? I might have regrets. I might need to apologize. I’m okay with those worlds. As a young mother, I needed honest motherhood books desperately. And the literary world—without authentic accounts of motherhood—would be lonely, unfair, and dishonest.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
Lidia Yuknavitch’s Chronology of Water was a touchstone for me as a young writer. It showed me what a book could do with metaphor. How a book could travel through time and space via the portal of a shapeshifting image. Find Yuknavitch and read her books (especially the new one!) to learn how to break through linear time and crush narrative restraints under your boot.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Recently I connected with a few aspiring authors who have said, “You debuted with a book of essays! So I can do it too!” At first, I hesitated. Because it was not easy, and everyone warned me against it, and I don’t wish my hardships upon others. But fuck that. Yes. You can do it. And the more of us that do, the more of us who can follow the trodden path. So let’s march.
What do you love about writing?
I mentioned earlier that my 9-year-old daughter is writing her first book. When she shows me each new page she’s finished, she’s giddy with thrill. Stars practically shoot from her eyes. And that makes me want to melt. So that’s what I love about writing: giddy new pages, shooting-eye-stars, and melting-self.
What frustrates you about writing?
It frustrates me that more people aren’t introduced to writing as a tool for freedom. It makes me sad that I almost didn’t find my favorite skill for weaving meaning of life because no one held my hand and walked me toward it. I hate that so many people don’t have access to the time or breath (from traumas) needed to write their way out of how their lives have been told. I’m frustrated by the systems that choose which stories will receive the love of great editors, and which stories will be neglected. The missing voices in the world make me crazy. Not just the missing voices of marginalized people, but of animals, bodies of water, ghosted ancestors, lands, trees, and the planet as a whole body.
What about writing surprises you?
Sometimes I write a sentence and it’s suddenly so familiar that I feel like I must have already written it. But I haven’t. Except maybe subconsciously, or in a dream, or in that bardo between lives. Similarly, sometimes I grasp for a word I’ve never used before, and when I find it, we feel like old friends. It surprises me every time: The warm familiarity of a strange sentence, mysteriously preconceived.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
A few years ago, I needed more routine to write: pretty journals, smooth pens, fancy candles. But these days (maybe it’s the state of the world?), I feel rebellious. And while waiting in the parking lot outside of a child’s dance class, I’ll open up the glove box, yank out the receipt from having the tires rotated, turn it over, find a stub of pencil rolling around the floor of the car, and fill that page from top to bottom. When my child knocks on the car window, I’m shocked an hour has passed and it feels SO good. Like a middle finger to the chaos around me. Like a slap in the face of my own too-cute needs. It makes me feel like I just got my driver’s license and I’m peeling out of the driveway. “Ha! You thought you knew me, but look what I can do!”
The essays in this book were definitely beachcombed. Each one glimmered at me from the sand. I picked an essay up, and turned it over and over to see how its colors shifted in the light, and if it fit, I moved it to my pocket to mingle with the others.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I do a lot of walking-writing. It’s kind of a problem. Especially for my dog who is like, “Are we stopping again? What are we even doing out here? You said, ‘WALK’ but there you are, standing and typing notes to yourself. You tell everyone you love to be ‘out in nature,’ but you’re always tapping at that damn phone. Let’s goooooo…” And she’s right.
My text chain with myself is completely unhinged. Maybe 10% of my writing happens in my texts to myself. I think it has something to do with the physical act of moving through space; it ungums and churns all my thoughts. And thanks to my erratic estrogen levels, I will lose those thoughts if I don’t type them down. Luckily, dogs are as persistent in their love as their walk-nagging.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I have two other books talking to me right now. One is a novel of which I have one bad draft. The other is a weaving of either short stories or POVs (the book has not told me exactly yet). The novel feels timely and needs love, but the story weave is the one waking me up in the dawn with its chatter. And such is the struggle of the writer, right? Navigating tensions and choosing which voices to listen to? I wouldn’t choose any other struggle over it. :)
Love this post! Especially her relatable description of her young daughter's excitement after writing: "giddy new pages, shooting-eye-stars, and melting self." She claims she may have reached her "limit" of "self-excavation," but I'm dubious--and hopeful for more in the future.
Really enjoyed this questionnaire — especially the response to the question about the elevator pitch, how it can change from ride to ride. I appreciate this sentiment, how a book's meaning can evolve, swing back around, find new places to go...