The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Saga Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1534439863

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Yetu is the historian for the wajniru, underwater beings created when slave traders threw pregnant African women overboard into the Atlantic Ocean. Although the women drowned, their children, born in the deep of the ocean, were transformed and have founded their own underwater society. As historian, Yetu carries the memories of all the trauma the mothers of the wajniru and the succeeding generations alone, to protect the others, and has done so for sixteen years, suffering tremendously from taking the burden alone. Once a year, she gets a three day respite from the memories when the wajniru hold a Rememberance ceremony. At that time, she carefully lets the memories wash back into the entire population so they can feel it collectively. The experience is physically as well as emotionally traumatic– author Rivers Solomon describes it as a seizure– but all the wajniru go through it together, and once they have absorbed the memories and can take no more, Yetu takes them back. Carrying all the history, violence, and trauma of her people has emotionally, mentally, and physically damaged and weakened Yetu, and since she has been carrying these memories since she was a teenager, they have overwhelmed her ability to establish her own identity. This time, after giving the wajinru’s memories back to them, Yetu decides to escape so she does not have to take on their pain again and can have an opportunity to discover who she really is.

Swimming to the surface of the ocean, away from her kind, Yetu is injured and washed into a tide pool. Thanks to nearby humans, and especially the prickly Oori, she begins to heal. An awkward friendship develops between Oori and Yetu, out of discussions about the ocean, family, and the past. Oori, the last of her people, does not know her history, and the fact that Yetu gave hers up is upsetting to her and causes Yetu to rethink whether she can really develop an identity without any knowledge of her history. It becomes clear to her that the increasingly stormy weather is probably due to the wajinru’s group anguish and that she must return to them to retrieve their history.

This story powerfully brings the point home about the physical, mental, and emotional effects of generational trauma that many Black people still experience, even generations after the end of slavery. The situation that created the wajinru is also not the only negative impact the “two-legs” have on them, even down in the deep of the ocean, as drilling for oil not only has a negative impact on the environment but causes the violent deaths of enough of the wajinru that they rise up to wash it away in a tidal wave.  The Deep is not fast paced, as for much of it Yetu is trapped in a tide pool, but it is a story that can be felt deep in the gut.

The Deep is the third iteration of storytelling based on the premise of an aquatic people born from drowned pregnant African women kidnapped to be enslaved(although each version can stand on its own).  A musical duo called Drexciya first imagined it, and their music created a mythology for an underwater utopia born from this terrible oppression. The hip-hop group clipping then wrote their own musical version, “The Deep”, a haunting song about underwater beings who rise as a collective against the “two-legs” after they begin drilling for oil, leading to dramatic climate change and destruction of the oceans, that won a Hugo Award for best dramatic performance. This novella takes the repeated line “y’all remember” from clipping’s song and focuses on the effects of history and collective memory that follow the uprising, While I’m not familiar with Drexciya, both clipping’s song and Solomon’s novella tell powerful, complementary stories about the violence and horror caused by white supremacy and enviromental destruction. Recommended.

I received this as a complimentary ARC from Saga Press through NetGalley.