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    The Deep
    The Deep
    The Deep
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Deep

    Written by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes

    Narrated by Daveed Diggs

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Winner of the 2021 Audie Award

    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 clipping

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateNov 5, 2019
    ISBN9781508280286
    Author

    Rivers Solomon

    Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, Solomon's debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, was a finalist for Lambda, Hurston/Wright, Otherwise (formerly Tiptree), and Locus Awards. Solomon's second book, The Deep, based on the Hugo-nominated song by the Daveed Diggs–fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and was short-listed for the Nebula, Locus, Hugo, Ignyte, Brooklyn Library Literary, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. Their work appears in Black Warrior Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Best American Horror and Dark Fantasy, and elsewhere. A refugee of the transatlantic slave trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.

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    Reviews for The Deep

    4/5

    1,411 ratings63 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Daveed read this story wonderfully! An interesting tale detailing the world created by the ill fated mothers thrown over board by evil slavers. Their children, aquatic adaptative, are nurtured by whales and create their own city with rules and rights of their own. This story filled me with the hope of knowing that a wicked beginning can have a beautiful ending.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      i was intrigued by the plot of the story when i 1st saw it, but got a surprise when i started listening to it.. for the 1st half the story was good, captive but then i totally got lost and by the end felt a little bit bored.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The book is inspired by a song of Clippings and the first part of the song offers a synopsis of the book:

      Our mothers were pregnant African women thrown overboard while / crossing the Atlantic Ocean on slave ships. We were born / breathing water as we did in the womb. We built our home on the / seafloor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers until / their world came to destroy ours. With cannons, they searched / for oil beneath our cities. Their greed and recklessness forced / our uprising. Tonight, we remember.

      The story is well written: Yetu - the keeper of memories of the Wajinru people who are living underwater, tries to escape her role of Historian and free herself from the pain and suffering that she has to carry by herself during an entire year, between the Remembrance ceremonies. Taking advantage of the trance-like state of her people during such a ceremony, she decides to escape and eventually arrives at the shore, where she meets Oori, a human who has a role opposite to hers: she does not have enough memories of her ancestors and she longs to.

      I liked the entire set of this novella and the lyrical account, the hopeful feeling that was transmitted in the end, but I have felt that something was missing in the end; the story did not really come to a full grip and I felt it remained more or less in a dream-like state. Compared with the song, the novella offered more an exploration of the feelings and thoughts of Yetu, but the rest of the characters are more supportive characters. I have seen that the book is described as one about the Wajinru people, but I found that it was about Yetu, and Wajinru people were just part of the overall setting. I would've rated the book higher if it created more of a storyline, instead of being so reflective and lingering on the same ideas for so long.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Amazing autistic rep. Made me feel seen as an autistic person. Need to make everyone in my life read this. How Rivers explains things that I have been trying to explain for years made me tear up at times.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This book started out sooo intense ? that I grabbed me in from the first few pages! But then the ending left me sooo wanting a more of a complete ending. Overall a good book but it leaves you incomplete (in my opinion).

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Narrated by the person who wrote the song that inspired the book. How’s that for meta?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I began listening to this work simply to get a feel for the narrator's voice, and the writing style, considering whether to add it to my ever-growing list of things to listen to, in time. But I was taken in. Lured. Intrigued. Led. A little more. A little further. A little deeper. Until I found myself immersed in the tale and its telling. Until there was no thought of stopping, and coming back to it "eventually". It is unique, wonderful, woeful, dark, beautiful, terrible, glorious. It needs to be experienced, and shared.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is a beautiful, painful, creative story about remembering and connecting to the past. The pregnant women who were kidnapped to be enslaved were often thrown over board on their way across the Atlantic. This is a story of their descendants who were born in the deep and survived, and what they must do to continue surviving.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic and heart wrenching. I wish i had more to say but i’m completely floored. Read it it speaks for itself.
    • 5/5
      This book was absoulutly fantastic. I love it so much!
    • 3/5
      Eh..idk how I feel about this book. There was a lot going on in such a little amount of time. I need to reread this.
    • 5/5
      Those book was sad and captivating and incredibly moving. The project is interesting and fascinating. It takes one of the most ugly part of human history and add to it something hopeful and beautiful while putting a harsh light onto the ugliness. It is a must read for sure.
    • 4/5
      It was good got a little weird to me personally but it was a good book 4 stars
    • 5/5
      Such a fascinating development for a novella. Excited to listen to clipping. and Drexciya next.
    • 5/5
      What a deeply complex and enriching story of generational trauma and freeing yourself from the shackles of expectations.
    • 5/5
      I love how they took a tragic invite of the slave ships and created an entire different world
    • 5/5
      So beautifully written I never wanted the story to end. ???
    • 5/5
      This was amazing Daveed Diggs's voice fit all the characters perfectly. I felt like I was living the story in my mind. The story itself is captivating and inventive. Even though this book is written through mythology, I still love the realism of how the wajinru were made and how they incorporated the importance of history. Also, reminding us the importance of knowing our past and further on to remember to live in the present. To know thy self.
    • 5/5
      This book is brilliant! I loved this story so much! It’s even more deep and emotional when you know all the inspiration behind it, the tragic historical fact that inspired a reimagining of life after a horrible injustice. The audiobook was amazing! How much we can feel it by the voice of Daveed. I highly recommend!
    • 5/5
      A fascinating twist on an old set of beliefs and tragedies that manifested through an equally fascinating game of mixed-media telephone.
    • 2/5
      Interesting book but really not my thing. Enjoying but not for me.
    • 2/5
      It was ok.. I zoned out on a couple of parts but I get the gist. Some parts were more interesting than others.
    • 5/5
      The Deep was a brilliant, moving story about trauma, history, and what it means to be alive, to be an individual. It was also a story about love and adapting. I deeply enjoyed it. Daveed Diggs's narration was perfect.
    • 3/5
      It was ok, Yetu kind of annoyed me however she is who she is and at the end of the day felt like she was gonna die so who can blame her
    • 5/5
      Everything, I want to look up more examples of African-American literature
    • 5/5
      What sophisticated and elegant story told of mermaids. I loved it!!!
    • 5/5
      I liked it. It was very different and kinda turned into a romance novel when I wasn't expecting it lol. But it was well written and engaging. But it was different. But that's the fun with afro futurism, ya never know what you'll get. Definitely recommend but don't come to this story expecting Children of Bone and Blood or Skin Deep. Be ready for it, The Deep, as it's own experience.
    • 2/5
      Messy, confusing writing. Too bad, the idea was brillant! Time is the biggest issue : it's not explained / organised well
    • 5/5

      “What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.”

      I don't know where to start with this book. It was an experience I didn't know I needed, until I was in it. When I was a little girl the thing I wanted to be more than anything was a mermaid. So reading about Mermaids that were descendants of an African slave woman..I was SOLD!

      While this story was darker than I assumed it would be, there was beauty in the history of The Deep. I loved Yetu's story, and how it teaches us that sometimes the best decision is for us to choose ourselves. And with that choice comes a journey of self discovery. While there were times where Yetu believed when she left her people she left her history, but I would like to believe that the history was always in the water and with that always with her...a part of her.

      I absolutely adored this book and I want more of this story because this world is one that is unique and just damn beautiful.
    • 5/5
      This book was amazing! Don’t read any blurbs or summaries, those give too much away, just jump right in. And listen/read to the afterword!