https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/19/the-crying-book-heather-christle-review

A personal examination of tears – what causes them, why we cry – which takes in biological science, relationship break-up, poetry and Donald Trump

What makes you cry? Recently I cried when my eldest daughter won a medal in a gymnastics competition; during a conversation with my wife; and while watching the films Marriage Story; Do the Right Thing; and, less explicably, Unstoppable, in which Denzel Washington pursues a runaway train. On the morning I began writing this review, I watched Green MEP Molly Scott Cato’s farewell speech to the European parliament. She started crying and then so did I.

These films, conversations and speeches were all things that were happening while I cried, but saying precisely which aspects of them triggered my tears, and why, is more difficult. This is one of the areas the poet Heather Christle explores in The Crying Book, her investigation into the physical, cultural and political aspects of crying. “Maybe we cannot know the real reason why we are crying,” she writes. “Maybe we do not cry about, but rather near or around. Maybe all our explanations are stories constructed after the fact. Not just stories. I won’t say just.”