The Deep - Rivers Solomon

The Deep

By Rivers Solomon

  • Release Date: 2019-11-05
  • Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Score: 4
4
From 98 Ratings

Description

Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, 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 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.

The Deep is “a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gaze…a superb, multilayered work,” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.

Reviews

  • HALE BAILEY

    5
    By Chillz_IV
    Halle (Ariel) mentioned this book in an interview she said daveed diggs (Sebastian) put her on ... I’m gonna give it a go
  • Fresh … Raw

    5
    By SeriousHorseAddiction
    This book touched me. I could feel the impact that being captured and taken across the ocean against one’s will and treated as an inferior being would have on a person, on a culture. Also lifted was the “that’s just the way it is” boxes that are what men are and what women are. I highly recommend this book as a read.
  • Touched my soul

    5
    By Lisa Bateman
    When I first saw this book cover I got so excited because of the mermaid on the front. I live mermaids. Then while reading, I saw it had a much deeper meaning than the reader could possibly comprehend from just the excerpt or first look. I’m ashamed to say, but I had to research about slaves being thrown into the sea. I don’t know why I never thought about the voyage part to their destination. I think because so much history and movies only show what happened after they reached their destination. This book really touched my soul. My mind has trouble even thinking about what was done to human beings. But it’s not something we should ever forget either. The author took something horrific and added a touch of her own magic and made it into something that will make any age want to read. I thank her for this. This book should be in all libraries and required reading at schools.

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