Sure, marine biology bewitches you. But when you’re naked as a needlefish, what if your prurient preferences paddle against a traditional tide? If you’re hot for oceanic science but not heteronormativity, a book can help make sense of it all. So can a private college; at least, it recently did.

Last month, Brown University posted to Instagram as follows:

Join the LGBTQ Center and the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology…for Lavender Reads, our co-sponsored book club! We’ll be reading “How Far The Light Reaches”…

Rhode Island’s Ivy League institution described the book as “a powerful blend of memoir and marine biology.” Notably, readers may not so much observe exotic animals as fawn over their fascinating selves:

[The work explores] environmentalism, queer theory, and biracial identity through the lens of deep-sea creatures and personal reflection. 

So imagine you’re a skoliosexual, pangender Person Of Color who’s dead-set on clobbering carbon. Or suppose you’re a BlaQueer bunself with a birthing-person front hole and a penchant for pummeling pollution. Might you better behold yourself through the perceptive peepers of an octopus? Maybe a scallop more sharply sees you for who you are. Either way, it seems both those aquatic animals have a grasp on queer theory; and they and a lobster might’ve cracked the code on bisexual identity.

LGBT biologists were sure to eat it up:

Come by (school Pride center) Stonewall House…to share your thoughts, engage in lively discussion, and connect with others in a welcoming and inclusive environment! Dinner will be provided!! All Brown University affiliates (students, staff, faculty, and postdocs) are welcome.

The first 20 responses, per the post, would garner a free book. 

Call it a cutting-edge combo — mixing ancient marine life with the new idea of gender identity; swirling sexual turn-ons with sea study.

Even so, the fusion fits our contemporary condition. Across all arenas, familiar focal points frequently float to the surface. Education has a message — about group identity, sexual possibility, and marginalization. Industry has a message, and it’s much the same. Religion has a message, and you can guess it. Wokeness is as widespread as the Pacific:

Each essay…profiles one…creature: the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs, the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams, the bizarre Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena), and other uncanny creatures lurking in the deep ocean, far below where the light reaches. … Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, “How Far the Light Reaches” is a book that invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.

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