The Deep by Rivers Solomon
Synopsis
"Yetu holds the memories 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."
My Thoughts
This book was such a unique and heart wrenching twist on mermaid mythology. I was absolutely floored by this amazing story. Starting this, I had no idea that it was based on a song by Daveed Diggs or that he would be narrating this audiobook. It was such a wonderful experience for such an amazing story!
The premise of the book is that merpeople are the descendants of African slaves who had been thrown overboard. And that their society has grown so that they have a Historian to keep the ancestral memory so the rest of their society can live, unburdened by the memories. Words fail me to describe how heart-wrenchingly beautiful this story is, but seeing something so brutal and terrible reborn into something new was fantastic. I loved the characters in this and you could feel the loneliness and pain of Yetu before she makes her decision.
I definitely recommend this book to everyone with consideration to the content warnings below!
Genre: lgbtqia+, fantasy
Representation: queer/sapphic MC
Content Warnings: attempted suicide, murder, slavery (past), animal death, grief, hallucinations, self-harm, trauma
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