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.

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 clipping. I hope it is left alone as the gem it is.WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY LGBTQ SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY/HORROR AWARD More story is possible, and there is plenty of world-building groundwork for it, but this stands alone plotwise and thematically. The same perspective could be applied for other terrible histories, as well.

Without awareness, life in the present circumstance alone is broken, with dire consequences. The novel is an allegory for the psychological burden of historical enslavement carried by modern descendants of the African diaspora. Then things get exciting, so I strongly recommend you stick with it. However, midpoint in the novel, she is presented with an opportunity to escape her fate and explore her own individuality at great cost to the community. We get to know Yetu, her Amaba (mother) and some predecessor Historians, although there is little action, and no actual problem other than Yetu’s struggle with her role. The novel comments on and extends the themes of the song in a way the resonates, and an afterward tribute by clipping is included in the book.įor such a short novel, the opening develops very slowly. The novel was inspired by ideas in a prior song by the experimental rap group clipping, consisting of Daveed Diggs (of Hamilton fame), William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes. It is, in my thinking, literary fantasy, as opposed to the science fictional nature of their first work. The Deep is River Solomon’s second novel, after their 2017 debut with An Unkindness of Ghosts.

Yetu is a young Historian who strains under the burden chosen when she was a child. The personal memories of the trauma that brought their ancestors into the sea are preserved and concentrated in individuals known as Historians, while most wajinru live fully in the present circumstance. The wajinru live in communion with the sea, have their own language, their own architecture, and their own culture. Some of them were pregnant women, and Rivers Solomon’s The Deep supposes that though they died, their children were born under water, were nurtured initially by whales, and lived their lives under the sea, forming a community of biologically altered beings.

During the Atlantic Slave Trade of the 16 th to 19 th centuries, some enslaved Africans were thrown overboard to drown, for various reasons.

The deep by river solomon