Cry, baby Why our tears matter

This book provides a compelling explanation of the value of tears as a needed expression of emotion for personal and societal transformation. Community educator, activist, and minister Perry crafts a selective multidisciplinary survey of weeping, woven with his own lived experience of learning to embrace tears as an embodiment of emotion and a fundamental aspect of individual and collective well-being. Depicting himself as an "evangelist for crying," Perry recounts his decision to learn the art of shedding tears. Opening chapters explore the physiological basis for crying. Perry summarizes key works in chapter 2, beginning with Darwin's The Emotional Expression of Man and Animals and tracing selected studies through the present. Readers will benefit from the cited science of this chapter, as well as the breadth of disciplines and their treatment of grief covered in subsequent chapters. Considerations of race, gender, class, and sexuality figure strongly in Perry's exploration. While he cites numerous causes of modern ills that engender tears, and that push some to suppress them, he also includes numerous stories and citations of personal experiences where the expression of tears transformed both the one crying and those observing the crier. "Cry like your tears matter, because they do," Perry advises, concluding a book that makes the case well. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Merrill Morris Hawkins, Carson-Newman University

Minister Perry investigates the human response to emotional and physical pain in this fascinating debut. Crying, the author suggests, "brings clarity, for through our tears we see what truly matters" and can help shape a better world. First, though, it needs to be better understood. Tears evolved partly as a means of communication, he writes, allowing infants to express basic needs and adults to seek help and soothe oneself. However, crying is generally socially frowned upon and tends to be seen as a sign of weakness or vulnerability, especially within masculine paradigms that curtail self-expression (to that end, Perry mentions pundits' mockery of President Obama's tears during his 2012 speech about the Sandy Hook shooting). And while many are made uncomfortable by witnessing someone cry, "those tears grant tacit permission to everyone else to cry as well." Moreover, weeping with another person is an "opportunity to meet where they are and discover common ground." As well, crying produces a heightened state of emotion, rendering the brain more receptive to new information, which is necessary, Perry writes, to awaken an apathetic society to often overlooked or conveniently ignored problems. Perry's survey is nuanced, and his vision of a more emotionally expressive society proves idealistic though not overly moralizing. Readers will find catharsis here. (May)