The Deep is a product of succeeding projects: First, a concept by Detroit electro-pop duo called Drexciya; then, a song by rap group clipping. featuring Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, for NPR’s This American Life; and finally, this book. This is a great legacy of Afrofuturism, the blend of story to story to story.

Having been abandoned by their Historian, the wajinru beneath the surface are slowly being driven mad by the burden of their people's traumatic memories. Their madness is creating a storm like the one that previously engulfed the surface world. Yetu must decide whether or not to return, saving both her people and the surface-dwellers like Oori, at the cost of retaking the burden of her people's memories. The story is a meditation on the importance of kinship, memory, and shared culture, but also balancing these with the need for individual expression. ("She touched each one of them, figuring out who each wajinru was outside of the oneness Remembrance brought. That mattered. Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.") And my personal jarring moment that completely took me out of the story - just one line, incongruent with the rest of the narration — the inner monologue line “Was such a thing passed down in DNA?”. Please, do not throw the reader out of the story by mentioning DNA, clearly not a wajinru concept, wajinru who refer to humans as “two-legs”. Minor, but irritating nevertheless. (Replace DNA with “blood” and it suddenly reads less jarring. Where were you, editors?)

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the characters were a bit non relatable but the writing was gorgeous as I said so it made up for that 😂 Heller, Jason (7 November 2019). " 'The Deep' Sings With Many Voices". NPR.org . Retrieved 2020-11-06.

Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1965, to an English father and mother of French, Italian, Maltese and Lebanese descent. Roffey was educated at St Andrew's School in Maraval, Trinidad, and then in the UK at St Maur's Convent, and St George's College, Weybridge. She graduated with a BA in English and Film Studies from the University of East Anglia in 1987, and later completed an MA and PhD in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Between 2002 and 2006 she was a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation. Resources Mami Wata Skin of the Sea, a fantasy novel featuring the Mami Wata, mermaids who collect the souls of enslaved people thrown overboard from slave ships. THE DEEP is a challenging read, unique in its telling and provocative in its themes. Solomon’s prose is powerful and delicate --- a poetic and insightful examination of violence, racism, pain, memory and identity." Now the Historian is Yetu, who longs to be free from the weight of pain and death and grief in the memories that are her burden to carry. The memories are destroying her, mentally and physically. “With each passing year, she was less and less able to distinguish rememberings from the present.” Driven by the need to survive, she flees — and, hurt and trapped, meets Oori, a human who is the last of her people. And now, vulnerable and far away wajinru, Yetu begins to confront the issues of identity, of loneliness, of belonging. The story unfolds from the history of these water-dwellers and from the individual burdened with that unimaginable weight. The characters are foreign yet identifiable, unlike and identical to readers. In the afterward, clipping describes the development (and retelling) of the tale much like a game of "Telephone."

We grow anxious and restless without you, my child. One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities. You don’t know what it’s like, blessed with the rememberings as you are,” said Amaba. Ten-Cent Daisy, a fantasy drama film centered on a Caribbean family who adopted a mermaid. The introduction mentions the belief that enslaved people thrown from slave ships have survived beneath the water in other forms. Absolutely moving though, even if you don't fully understand why it is slowly ripping your heart out of your chest.

I am here, Amaba. I promise,” said Yetu quietly, exhaustedly, though she wasn’t sure that was true. Adrift in a memory that wasn’t hers, she hadn’t been present when she’d brought herself to the sharks to be feasted upon. How could she be sure she was here now? This has been another round of Joey dashing into a book too fast and missing the ‘lgbt’ label. 🤦‍♂️

Daveed Diggs

Yetu's story is interspersed with other stories from wajinru history, including the Tidal War between wajinru and two-legs. That war flooded the world after the two-legs invaded the deep to drill for oil. It still pleased her that she could do that, that it was possible to have her mind to herself. Without the History devouring the whole of her mind, she had an inkling of who she was. She didn’t have answers yet, but she had questions, endless questions. And worries, and concerns. But they were hers.”

Yetu es una historiadora obligada a recordar y vivir una y mil veces el pasado de su pueblo y su origen, ella, y el resto de sirenas son descendientes de las mujeres embarazadas que se lanzaban al mar desde los barcos esclavistas por ser una carga molesta o enferma. A través de Yetu conocemos el momento en que nacen las wajinru, en el que se crea esta fascinante comunidad, su manera de relacionarse y de entenderse y la dureza de la vida para Yetu, que deber recordar una y otra vez estos espantosos momentos, ¿Pero es el olvido la solución? The Deep was on the short list for the British Fantasy Award in the Best Novella category, though it did not win. [12] [13] 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.

A historian’s role was to carry the memories so other wajinru wouldn’t have to. Then, when the time came, she’d share them freely until they got their fill of knowing. I do appreciate the creation of this story and I would even read it again, it's just a hard one to grasp. David was strumming his guitar and singing to himself when she first raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the flat, grey sea, its stark hues of turquoise not yet stirred. Plain so, the mermaid popped up and watched him for some time before he glanced around and caught sight of her.