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The Deep
Scritto da Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs e Jonathan Snipes
Narrato da Daveed Diggs
Azioni libro
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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' 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.
Azioni libro
Inizia ad ascoltareInformazioni sul libro
The Deep
Scritto da Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs e Jonathan Snipes
Narrato da Daveed Diggs
Descrizione
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' 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.
Informazioni sull'autore
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Recensioni
Very beautiful concept but I had a hard time following the plot. I listened to it in bed to fall asleep and it was relaxing to listen to the story of the ocean.
Rating: 4It’s was amazing. Turning a tragedy into something more something . Rivers Solomon is an amazing author
Rating: 5
Such a fascinating development for a novella. Excited to listen to clipping. and Drexciya next.
Rating: 5This 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!
Rating: 5Interesting book but really not my thing. Enjoying but not for me.
Rating: 2Eh..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.
Rating: 3
It was good got a little weird to me personally but it was a good book 4 stars
Rating: 4
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.
Rating: 5Amazing 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.
Rating: 5The concept is so brilliant and beautiful and breathtaking the execution could never live up to it, no matter who wrote it. Still, the many co-creators fleshed out the music and the world and the words into more than a lyric: into a myth which will alter my view of the ocean forever.
Rating: 4This story is an interesting meditation on identity, community, trauma, and history. I liked the characters and the ending.
Rating: 4The Deep by Rivers Soloman and the members of the rap group Clipping is a deeply unique and thought provoking novella. What originally drew my interest to this book was the use of the term Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is defined as the reimagining of a future filled with arts, science and technology seen through a black lens. The Deep accomplishes this—and more—by weaving history throughout the story. Pregnant slaves traveling in ships across the ocean were thrown overboard. Eventually the children adapted to a life under water, growing fins and breathing water. An entirely new society evolved. Because of their tragic and painful past, one Historian holds on to the memories of the past for the whole society. This is Yetu the Historian’s story. I enjoyed this book very much! It was a wonderful glimpse into a “new to me” genre.
Rating: 4I absolutely loved the concept of The Deep, essentially that there are descendants of pregnant African slaves who’d been thrown overboard during the oversea voyage. The descendants, born of water, raised by whales, continued to thrive in the ocean.The concept was easily the best thing about The Deep. It's an idea I'd love to see explored in more depth. I also really liked the language in this book. The words Solomon uses echo the lull and tempest of the ocean.This is a very short book, and I never felt as though the story or the characters were given sufficient space to be fleshed out, or to grow.
Rating: 4
What a deeply complex and enriching story of generational trauma and freeing yourself from the shackles of expectations.
Rating: 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.
I love how they took a tragic invite of the slave ships and created an entire different world
Rating: 5
I've been raving & reccomending this book since I read it back in January. And the audio? Has made it even more of a lovely, moving read. I can't say that I've managed to fully describe the ways in which this book moved me - how it made me cry - but until I do. . . Well, this review will have to be a suitable placeholder. Though seriously, read this book.
Rating: 5Pros: interesting mythology, sympathetic protagonistCons: Yetu is the Historian of the wajinru, sea dwelling descendants of pregnant slave women cast overboard. The memories of the ancestors overwhelm and pain Yetu, so they conceive a plan to leave the memories behind. The Afterward mentions that the idea behind the wajinru comes from the mythology written by the music group Drexciya (James Stinson and Gerald Donald). Another music group, Clipping (rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes) wrote the song “The Deep” (nominated for a Hugo award in 2018) based on that mythology. The narrative of Basha, one of the ancestors whose story is told in this novella, incorporates the war with the two-legs that “The Deep” speaks of. The mythology of the story is strangely poetic as it takes something horrifying and turns it into something beautiful. And while the story is fairly short, there’s a lot to take in. There’s a real weight to it, a depth that makes the underwater world feel real and lived in. The idea of a singular memory keeper reminded me of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, but I much preferred the ultimate solution the protagonist comes up with here for how to deal with memories as a population that wishes to forget the past while having it accessible, without having a singular member of the group subsumed by those memories. I appreciated that Yetu had anxiety and this caused the memories to weigh on them even more than on past historians. It’s a sad, touching, and ultimately hopeful story that’s definitely worth the read.
Rating: 4I received a galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.The very concept of this novella is incredible: that the babies of pregnant African women, fallen/dropped/thrown from slave ships during the Atlantic slave trade became children of the ocean--merfolk. It was originally a song performed by the Clipping, a group that includes the original Thomas Jefferson from the musical Hamilton, Daveed Diggs. The musical group collaborated with Rivers Solomon to create a full, intricate story.The result is a beautifully-written work, and a fast read at that. Yetu is the historian of her kind, and her task is onerous: she's supposed to continue living as herself, even as she channels the vivid, often horrific memories of those who came before her. She knows the full truth of why her kind exist. Yetu is especially sensitive to these memories and has barely lived as herself. Once a year, though, she channels these memories to all of her kin--and this time, during the ceremony, she makes a dire choice.I found Yetu's story to be strong and she is easy to relate to. I didn't want to stop reading once I started. I ended up blazing through in a day! I was a bit lost at a few points, though, and at one point DNA is referenced, which seemed like a weird anachronism to slip through. The ending is a bit predictable, but thoroughly satisfying.I enjoyed another work that Rivers Solomon collaborated in, the Serial Box novel called The Vella. They are definitely an author to watch.
Rating: 4Pregnant women who were thrown overboard en route to becoming slaves instead birthed the wajinru, mermaids who have their own unique society and way of life. The Deep is both the story of the wajinru, and the story of Yetu, the Historian of the wajinru. Yetu is responsible for keeping the traumatic story of the wajinru to herself most of the year, sharing it with her people only during a special ceremony. Yetu is losing the battle to keep herself sane and whole when dealing with the memories - but can she abandon her people to save herself?I liked this novella. I liked reading about Yetu, I liked getting the backstory of the wajinru, I liked the two-legs Yetu meets, and and I like the ending. I almost wish it was longer - spoilers after this - I would have liked to have the perspective of the wajinru who stayed in the womb, but the stream-of-consciousness nature of the wajinru sans their historical memory combined with the presumably overwhelmed nature of their thoughts during that period would make it a difficult thing to write coherently. I also would have liked to find out more about the war between water and land than we did.All in all, this is an effective novella. I recommend it. It's a good read. I really need to get around to listening to the song.Thank you to Bookishfirst and the publisher for the ARC.
Rating: 4
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.
Rating: 5
Narrated by the person who wrote the song that inspired the book. How’s that for meta?
Rating: 5I haven't read a great adult mermaid novel in.... forever. The story was unique, dark, and captivating; although the plot was quite slow at time. Inspired by the pregnant African slaves who were thrown overboard to die on their way to America for being "disruptive" cargo; the authors wondered what happened to their unborn babies who were already breathing underwater in their mother's womb? Inspired may not be the right word; but that horrible back story helped mold this book into what it is. Yetu, an underwater being tasked with storing the entire history of her people, is barely hanging on. The history of the wajinru is a violent and bloody one and it wants to claw it's way out of Yetu. The wajinru are descended from the pregnant slave woman, yet that traumatic history is too much for their people to process so the historian (Yetu) must house all that painful history and bear the burden for all. Yetu must find a way to live with those truths or pass them onto others without breaking tradition. Dark, slow at times, but unique and enchanting!
Rating: 3Short book about the mermaid-ish descendants of pregnant Africans thrown over slave ships to die; their babies magically were born breathing water, with gills and fins. Most of them don’t know their history or even have specific long-term memories; Yetu is the historian, who holds memories for them. But the immensity and the horrors of those memories are killing them. When Yetu abandons their post and meets humans, but leaves their people lost amidst the memories, they will have to decide what kind of person they are going to be—whether cycles of pain can be broken, or reinterpreted, or lived with and improved on. No one is perfect, but they are generally trying (even if that means imposing rules on how others should experience the world that end up doing harm, the way Yetu’s parent does). For me, it was too short to have the kind of impact that Solomon’s first book did. What I ended up focusing more on was the afterword attributed to the three non-Solomon authors, which explains that the book is based on a song that Diggs’ group did, which was itself based on the concept behind some instrumental music by another group; each has its own version of the tale, and Solomon’s isn’t taken in any direct way from the song. Nonetheless, and despite what the afterword says about shared stories and the importance of reinterpretation, the copyright page shows that the copyright is entirely in Diggs et al., not shared with Solomon (and if Solomon had just released this story on its own, there’s no way it would be an infringing derivative work of the song, although I respect the desire to share some credit). That sat badly with me.
Rating: 3Daveed 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.
Rating: 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.
Rating: 3Our 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.
This book has one of the most original concepts I have heard lately. A race of mermaids born from the deaths of pregnant African slaves tossed overboard in the middle of the ocean. That sounds fascinating!Unfortunately, the execution of this book isn’t as awesome as it could be. The book follows the existential crisis of Yetu, the “historian” of the mermaids. There are many flashbacks which tell the history, but really there is no action. Almost everything takes place in Yetu’s mind. Should she abandon her historian duties or not. Thank goodness this was a novella. I don’t think I could have read much more. The world building is interesting but you need a good story to go along with it.I received a free ARC from BookishFirst and the publisher.
Rating: 2
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.
Rating: 3