A host of LGBTQ+ authors are finding parallels with mermaids, tropical fish and other creatures of the deep as a way to make sense of their own lives
“I’ve always had a very strong connection to the sea,” says author Sabrina Imbler, who grew up in California by the Pacific Ocean. “I remember always being like: ‘If I could live anywhere, this is where I would be: I would be a fish in this place.’ I think about queerness in a similar way– as a space of possibility and radical imagination.” It is with this in mind that Imbler’s essay collection, My Life in Sea Creatures, published at the end of last year, explores 10 sea or aquatic creatures and how, among other things, they relate to their identity as a queer, mixed-race person.
There is, for example, Imbler’s essay on cuttlefish, which are known for their capability to change appearance to resemble the opposite sex. “I found it very liberating to try to understand the many ways in which a cuttlefish can transform,” adds Imbler, speaking over Zoom from where they now live in New York. In another chapter, Imbler explores the yeti crab, which lives in deep-sea hydrothermal vents – spaces, they say, “that we humans would consider very hostile or inhospitable to life”. This got Imbler “thinking about the ways in which I feel like queer people often take refuge in spaces that straight people don’t want”.
