ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group clippingYetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling … for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.
Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.
Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.
Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.
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Haunting. Stunning writing. Will keep you up at night.
A reimagining of slaves thrown off chattel ships becoming MERMAIDS! Inspired by a Daveed Diggs song of the same name.
Weird.
Yetu is the appointed historian for her people. She was chosen at the young age of 14 to carry the memories of her people, the Wajinru. Memories that would destroy them as a people if they had to carry them year round, but also memories that starve and bring relentless hunger for knowledge if they do not remember their past.
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Once a year there is Rememberance where The Historian will push the memories into the Wajinru so they suffer the history of their descendents as one and then in turn become “full” with the knowledge they hunger for. It is The Historian’s job to collect the memories back once the remembering is complete otherwise the Wajinru will, in a sense, explode. They cannot handle the history of what was.
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However this Rememberance Yetu has other plans…she is running away after transferring the descendents’ memories and leaving the entire Wajinru people to their fate. She is tired of the constant pain and suffering she endures carrying the history. She knows if she takes the memories back this time…she will die.
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For such a small book it is jam-packed with all the emotions. It’s not really a book about mermaids. It’s about the fact that slavers threw pregnant women overboard and nature took over and changed the babies in order for them to survive. It’s also about the history of a tortured people and the importance of remembering that history.
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I’m not going to say I fully understood what I read as there was just so much packed in there and, to put it plainly, I will never understand the excruciating pain and deep loneliness that slaves were forced to endure. I will say it’s a powerfully beautiful book that touches upon the horrors of slavery and the resiliency of those tortured that managed to move on and find inner peace. This is a definite must read.
I listened to the audio of this one and Daveed Diggs’ magical voice completely transported me to the world of the Wajinru. The concept of the history of an entire people resting with one chosen at time is so unique and such a powerful commentary on the learning and teaching of history as a whole.
The three subtle timelines of the story weave together in such a way that even though the story is short, it’s robust and enthralling. Yetu’s journey as a historian, as a daughter, and as an individual is very relatable.
Rivers Solomon has become one of my favorite authors with their debut, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and this wonderful novella. The Deep is beautiful, painful, haunting, and ultimately joyful.
This book feels like a classic.
It feels like one of those stories you grow up listening to, like folklore, like history—which is exactly the intention of it, and I was left mesmerized by all the ways the text accomplished its goals.
The way Rivers writes about history and what it means to know your own past, share it with your people vs. carry it all by yourself, was so perfectly developed. I felt so connected with Yetu’s struggles, despite not sharing them. As someone who has the privilege of knowing about my heritage and ancestry, to be able to relate so much to a story not intended for me only goes to show how powerful it is and how brilliantly it was told.
The Deep is the powerful and emotional story of Yetu, the historian of the Wajinru people. The Wajinru are a mermaid-like people living deep in the sea, the descendants of pregnant African slaves who were thrown overboard from slave ships. Their babies could breathe underwater and were raised by whales. The story is set hundreds of years after the time of slavery. The Wajinru appoint one historian to hold and experience all the history and memories of their people, so that they do not have to live burdened by these memories. This person is Yetu. The trauma of experiencing centuries of memories, both wonderful and traumatic, is destroying Yetu emotionally and physically. In a ceremony, she gives the memories to her people and escapes to find herself near land. She experiences autonomy and freedom from the memories for the first time in many years. She meets humans who live near the water and has a relationship with one of them. She must eventually return to the Wajinru and her people must find a new way to keep their memories. This book is beautifully written and haunting. The world building is imaginative and skillfully done. Highly recommended.
When I first saw this book cover I got so excited because of the mermaid on the front. I live mermaids. Then while reading, I saw it had a much deeper meaning than the reader could possibly comprehend from just the excerpt or first look. I’m ashamed to say, but I had to research about slaves being thrown into the sea. I don’t know why I never thought about the voyage part to their destination. I think because so much history and movies only show what happened after they reached their destination. This book really touched my soul. My mind has trouble even thinking about what was done to human beings. But it’s not something we should ever forget either. The author took something horrific and added a touch of her own magic and made it into something that will make any age want to read. I thank her for this. This book should be in all libraries and required reading at schools.
I won a copy of this book from BookishFirst.com after reading the First Look. This is my unbiased and voluntary review.
It looked intriguing about a new species of aquatic human created after pregnant African slaves bound for America were thrown overboard, during labor, because of lack of supplies. I could not find any history of this actually happening to pregnant slaves but it did to male slaves. In this fantasy, the babies were born in the water and rescued by whales(?). It was all kind of fuzzy to me. To avoid the pain of remembering, every generation an Historian was chosen to keep all the racial memories. The current Historian is Yutu, but she was not prepared for the responsibility of being the vessel for their ancestors’ memories and it is killing her. Annually, there is a ceremony, where the Historian shares all the history with the others for a few days and then take sit all back, but instead after sharing the history, Yuti flees to the surface, where she meets two-legged beings. Unfortunately, I found it very confusing, not helped with the inconsistency of the use of pronouns. I also found it very offensive in the Afterward, when the fictional throwing of thousands of slaves in labor overboard is called “the greatest holocaust the world has ever known”, as if 6 million Jews murdered was nothing and a few pages later comparing this to a Passover Seder. Would I recommend this book? No.