Deep in the Atlantic Ocean live mermaids descended from pregnant Africans thrown overboard slave ships. Yetu is one of these creatures chosen as a historian, tasked with remembering the traumatic history that led to their own survival. But is the burden of remembering too much for Yetu to bear?

Based on a song by clipping., this is an imaginative, nuanced, and dynamic mythos that imagines a more empowered ending for those captured as slaves. Rivers Solomon has a great gift for layered storytelling, and their writing added such beautiful detail to the concept introduced by clipping. I got chills reading this novella. It's atmospheric, dark, and painful, but also hopeful. The Deep is a stunning story that won't soon be forgotten.

Everything Solomon writes is pure gold. I was absolutely stunned and in love with An Unkindness of Ghosts and it's no different with The Deep. Introspective and emotional, The Deep asks questions about memory, the community versus the individual, and more. The Deep encompasses my deep love for the work of Rivers Solomon plus my fascination of mermaids. I can't think of a better combination. From the summary alone I fell in love - the concept of a people forgetting their history, except for one person. There's something inexplicably moving. To be without our past, but one person burdened with the memories. Yetu is the Historian and is forced to relive her pain for their memories that they cannot hold.

It's the responsibility of carrying your people's past. Reliving those moments of trauma, sadness, guilt, and pain under your skin. Roaring in your mind and threatening to take over at a moments notice. When we forget our past, their struggles, and their scars. The Deep examines Yetu's personal journey as she seeks to escape the burden of the collective past which she shoulders alone. Interspersed with memories, The Deep is an experience that makes it feel like we are living these moments ourselves as they are brought to life.

The Deep is a compelling novella focused on the importance of history as a part of cultural identity, specifically within the black community. This short tale is focused, coherent, and was written to convey its message clearly and concisely: even if the past is painful and full of trauma, it is key to understanding our modern identity both as individuals and as a larger cultural group. Our past leaves an indelible imprint on our present.

The premise of the book is rooted in the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade, viewed through a surprisingly optimistic lens. Where the slave trade caused irreparable harm, new opportunities for community and identity have been born. The wajinru, a mermaid-like race living in the sea, are the sea-born offspring of pregnant black slaves who have been tossed over the side of slave ships to die. The wajinru live with the opportunity to live a life grounded not in their past, but rather in the present: each of the wajinru is possessed of a memory that blanks out the pain of the past. Yetu, however, is the exception to this. She is the wajinru’s Historian, who holds all the generational memories that are too painful for her culture as a whole to hold. They overwhelm her, subsume her, until she simply can’t take it any longer. The past begins to blur with the present, and the imbalance between the two is too much for anyone to handle.

However, the wajinru who don’t have Yetu’s connection to the History still need a taste of it to ground them to who they are. Every year, they come together for a telling of the History across three days. It is experienced with all the senses, it is lived. The Historian passes the History out away from herself, such that she might finally have a moment of peace while the rest of her people experience the memories she held in trust. This is both the best part of Yetu’s life and the hardest: it gives her a chance to breathe without the weight of her ancestors, yet the energy needed to guide the other wajinru through the remembering is immense.

‘Yetu knew what they would do. First, seize her. Next, gut her mind. Last, fill her empty shell with ancestors and pretend they hadn’t just murdered Yetu by forcing her to endure these memories endlessly for another year. The thought of it made her shake. This time, she wouldn’t emerge from it. There would be no Yetu left for the next Remembrance. She’d be dead. Yetu wouldn’t let them do it.’

When Yetu refuses to take the memories back from her people during the remembering, she undertakes a journey to find out who she is on her own. She meets the humans who are her ancestors, finds both kindness and heartbreak. Without the memories, she initially believes herself to finally be whole once more. There is space for her, without thousands of voices clamoring to be heard inside of her.

‘“I know who I am now. All I knew before was who they were, who they wanted me to be,” said Yetu. “And it was killing me. It did kill me. I wasn’t Yetu. I was just a shell for their whims.”

Oori shook her head and stood up from the water. “But your whole history. Your ancestry. That’s who you are.”

“No. I am who I am now. Before, I was no one.”’

As she does this, the wajinru she’s left behind create their own storm. In facing the rememberings without guidance, they find that they are not prepared to understand their origins on their own. Their anger at the way they have been treated comes to the forefront, and the ocean responds to their fear and hatred. Yetu is faced with a choice: she must leave the wajinru to sink the world and retain her own personhood, or she must take on the Histories once more to prevent the collapse of the world as she knows it.

Although I loved the themes and premise of this book, the one thing that didn’t work well for me was the prose. It was often too distant for me to truly connect to either the atmosphere or to the characters themselves. I appreciate novellas for their ability to convey big concepts in small spaces, but this seemed like a book that suffered for the length; these characters and ideas could have been teased out into a much stronger novel-length book with greater focus on imagery, description, and characters. As it was, it was simply too laser-focused on the narrative and ideas for me to be completely drawn in the way I prefer. The characters didn’t have a chance to grow and acquire quite as much nuance as I had hoped.

Nevertheless, this is an incredibly culturally significant novella. Too often, these are actual voices and actual histories which are glossed over and erased. Fantasy is a powerful genre to bring these back to the forefront, and I love seeing this done effectively – especially in formats such as novellas which are typically more challenging to break into. Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes have all come together to raise their voices in this short yet poignant work.

The Deep is a beautiful work of art! The language has a rhythm to it that takes a little getting used to, but once you fall into it, it is soothing like hearing waves against the shore.

If you are looking at the cover and hoping for a Disney-like mermaid story, don't get your hopes up any farther. This isn't a typical mermaid fairy tale, so anyone expecting songs and singing crabs is going to be very disappointed. There's a darkness to this story, a sadness wrapped around every turn of the page. It's built so well into the story that the reader can feel its weight but still crave it, like a fish craves the pressure of water against it's fins.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The worldbuilding and overarching concepts in this book are very interesting. We are introduced to an underwater society (basically mermaids though that word is never used) descended from enslaved African women who were tossed overboard during the middle passage. As long as you are willing to suspend disbelief and accept that quite a few things about them can best be explained as “because magic,” it’s a pretty cool concept.

The authors explore themes related to painful history and identity. Our protagonist is the society’s “historian”: a role that seems to be ripped straight out of Lois Gowry’s The Giver (though repurposed a bit). Most of the book focuses on her trauma from having to bear the painful memories of all her ancestors while the rest of her society live essentially without memory.

How the “historian’s” trauma was handled is where the book lost me a bit. Apparently the authors felt that the best way to convey the depth of this trauma is to have her go over and over and over it in almost the exact same words for pages on end, circling back to it repeatedly while giving short shrift to actually describing the memories. Repetitive morbid introspection is a pet peeve of mine, and this book has it in spades. Add to this a completely tangential semi-detailed discussion of “mermaid” sexuality that seems designed purely to check off the “look how woke we are” box, and I feel like the book’s pace was completely off. Overall, interesting story, but it would have been much better as a short story rather than a novella.

(Also, this book developed out of a rap song by Clipping which is definitely worth looking up on youtube)

When pregnant African slaves were thrown overboard, they helped create a species of mer-people that live in the deep of the ocean. Yeta is the only person in their species that carries they memories of their frightening history because they are too hard for the others to bare. But once a year they gather together so Yeta can share the knowledge of the past. Afterwards the others are soon released of their grief and Yeta is forced to endure it all alone again and it’s killing her. Determined to leave the past behind for a better future she flees her people. Along the way she must make tough choices and discovers much about herself and her people along the way. I am amazed that such a short novel could pack so much meaning behind a fantasy story!

*Thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review*

I knew this was going to be intense, and I suspected it was going to be beautiful, but it still hit me hard. I cried a lot. It’ll be drowning my brain for a few days while I recover. In the meantime, I’ll say what I can about it that isn’t too spoilery.

Rivers Solomon is a master at exploring trauma through narrative, and in “The Deep,” it’s both intergenerational trauma and the burden of collective memory carried by one, unwilling, person. The wajinru are undersea people descended from the pregnant women thrown out of slave ships, and just as they evolved gills and fins to adapt to their new home, they also developed a way to manage the memory of their brutal past: transfer those memories and their histories to one individual so the other 6,000 wajinru can live without its painfulness.

This solution seems unsustainable, and Yetu—the current historian chosen to carry the past—agrees. Previous historians didn’t feel as tortured by the memories as Yetu does, and the painfulness of the memories (as well as other sensory input) stem from a hypersensitivity reminiscent of Lauren Olamina’s in Octavia Butler’s “Earthseed” series. Unlike Olamina’s hyperempathy, Yetu’s pain is the price of peace for the rest of the wajinru, who don’t believe it’s as bad as she tells them it is, and continue to choose their oblivion over her health. It’s an undersea Omelas.

What makes it most difficult for Yetu is the tug of war between her individual sense of self and the importance of being part of the community. The community’s memories physically hurt her, but she still feels a duty to carry them, to the point of suicidal ideation, and then on top of all that, still feels guilty about not being able to fulfill this duty without dreaming of ending it. She feels like she has no personhood, and it’s literally killing her. Yetu’s in a bad place and nobody else can help her.

While I felt most interested in this push-and-pull of individual vs collective, there’s so much more going on, I’m sure scholars and people smarter than I are going to write lots of papers about it all. The role of white supremacist violence in intergenerational trauma and adaptation to that violent memory (and continued violence, both evolved and not); Clipping’s approach of “emphasizing collaborative authorship” and how that’s mirrored in the story; the evolution of the story in terms of each collaborator’s background; gender identities in two-legs vs wajinru; and dozens of other paths to understanding the story that I can recognize the outlines of, but don’t quite have the brain capacity right now to translate them to words.

This is going to be an important book for a lot of reasons. It’s already an important book for a lot of reasons. Read it. Listen to the song. Follow up with any other materials any of the collaborators recommend.

Rating: five stars.

"Remember," she said.
This was their story. This was where they began. Drowning.
"Submit," Yetu whispered, talking to herself as much as to them.

The Deep is a story borne out of the legacy of slavery, of the horrifying reality of slavers crossing the Atlantic Ocean and dumping the bodies of pregnant women over board. It is a story borne out of wondering about what life might grow out of that death. The Deep is a story of origins and new beginnings, of the horror of institutional memory and what it costs the individual.

Rivers Solomon takes the song "The Deep" from Clipping and gives it further live and character, gives it a different perspective and richness that the song hinted at but that Solomon had the room to explore across 176 pages that wasn't possible in the same way Clipping could do in five and a half minutes. Clipping's song "The Deep" was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form in 2018.

"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 this all 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."

As the sole historian for the wajinru, it is Yetu's role and responsibility to remember the history of their race. Except for the historian, the wajinru functonally do not have long term memory or a sense of identity. With that lack of memory for the individual, the annual Remembrance gives live to the group because without it they would continue to forget who they are and where they came from. That sounds superficial, but Rivers Solomon and Clipping are not concerned with the surface. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the novella's title (and the song's) is more than just the depth where the wajinru exist.

The wajinru's gradual forgetting of their cultural past causes great pain and desperation and it's tied to a loss of individual identity as well. It is the "endless longing" quoted above. It's more than symbolic. Born from the bodies of the pregnant women thrown into the ocean by slavers, the wajinru are something new and the creation of the wajinru is so awful, so painful, that over the course of generations they adapt so that only one must bear the weight of history. The rest are blessed and cursed to forget. Both are with heavy cost.

I have never read anything like The Deep.

Solomon's writing is incredible. With only a few sentences I felt the water, the pressure of the deep, the movement of current and body. The water almost became a character and, not to mix metaphors too much, grounded the story into a particular location that the reader can sense.

The Deep is a novella filled with pain and despair and rage and a glimmer of hope. It is built off of real history and pulled in unimaginable directions, except that it was imagined and we're all better off because Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes, and Rivers Solomon saw the possibilities of building something beautiful out of raw horror.

"What is belonging?" we ask
She says," Where loneliness ends"

The Deep is is a must read novella in a year stuffed full of must read books. This is essential reading.

I 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.

This novella was inspired by the song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’ rap group Clipping, which I am not familiar with, but this book still sounded (and is) amazing.

It took until the end of chapter 2 for the book to really grab me, I mean this is a novella. But it feels longer than it's 170 pages. And I mean that in a good way. It's called a novella, but it doesn't feel like one.

This was such a compelling and interesting book. I have no idea when it's supposed to take place, or where exactly it takes place, I know somewhere in the ocean, but I don't know where in relation to Africa. It kind of doesn't matter for the sake of what's going on. I just like to have visuals for stuff like that.

There was a lot that happened in this book, and it didn't feel rushed one bit. Though I would have liked a little more explanation for somethings, the passage of time was confusing at times for me, with the narration going into the past throughout the book, and I got confused a couple of times. (this could be an issue that's specific to me, and has nothing to do with the book itself) But the exact year is also never stated by any character, just a vague reference that it's been a very long time since the first of them was born.

This book is so different from anything that I have read in a while. And a beautiful and compelling tale of personal history, and memories. I highly recommend it.

Rivers Solomon has created something quite special in this story. The children of women thrown off slave ships have evolved to mermaids and to keep the whole community of mermaids from experiencing the tragic story of their origin, one of them is designated as the Historian. Our narrator, Yetu, is one such Historian, tasked with carrying centuries of her people’s trauma and her struggle to stay alive under its weight. The result is a beautiful story of the importance of and the trauma of history and how people struggle to hold on to their individuality. The language is lyrical and poetic, almost as if mimicking ocean waves. This is not a heavy action story by any means, but its rich thematic elements make it an important read. Would definitely recommend for any and every library shelf.

A quick, meaty read - I took it as an allegory about people who choose not to "dwell on" a painful past, thereby burdening an activist few. Rivers Solomon has quickly gone to my "must read" list.

3.5 stars

The concept will always be one of my favorites. There is a lot to love in this book. I really liked the main character and struggle between her personal identity and life and her role and identity within her community as the Historian. The world building was really good for a novella; I wish there'd been more of it. But the pacing really lagged in several places and it didn't have a super strong voice. This is a great book for fans of Hamilton, fantasy, historical fiction, and anyone interest in a unique mythology.

I'm almost more blown away with the concept of this novella than the novella itself -- which is only to say that the book is great but the concept is WOW. I heard Clipping's telling of "The Deep" on This American Life and it was one of those listening experiences that I constantly crave, when I'm simultaneously completely sucked in but aware that I'm listening to something unlike anything I've ever heard before. Rivers Solomon's telling of the story of an underwater people descended from the children of pregnant African women thrown overboard off slave ships is totally different in atmosphere from the song and refocuses the story on the concept of remembrance. I loved their idea of exploring the dissonance between remembering trauma and living unbound from the weight of history. The novella's afterword, provided by Clipping, is fascinating, exploring their approach to collective authorship.

"A whole chorus of the deep. Wajinru. We are not zoti aleyu. We are more vast and more beauteous than that name implies. We are a song, and we are together."

The Deep is a gorgeous piece of literature mourning the tragic and traumatic history of the African slave trade, as well as celebrating a renewed sense of belonging and togetherness. This novella is crushing and beautiful and emotionally impactful beyond belief for something of its length, and I don’t think it’s possible to truly express how this book has affected me. It showcases the brutality in human history and the pain of remembering the past. But it’s this pain that forms us, that makes us who we are, and reminds us of where we come from, regardless of the color of our skin or the gods we pray to. It’s something to be collectively shared, not just remain a burden for one individual or group to bear. By remembering, we can finally come together as one, heeding the consequences of past actions to create a brighter future.

This story is an interpretation of an interpretation that becomes more grand with each iteration. Drexciya, a techno-electro duo began the mythological tale of death as an escape from oppression, which experimental hip hop group clipping. used as a basis for their 2017 song The Deep. I highly suggest you give this Hugo-nominated song a listen, as it captures this entire saga’s essence to perfection in a stunning way. Rivers Solomon utilizes this song to conceive one of the most poignant and sentimental yarns I have ever read, sending chills down my spine on countless occasions, and bringing me to tears more times than I care to admit to. The Deep transcends methods of media and genre, and this Afrofuturistic Science Fiction/Fantasy novella is one to be revered by all.

Solomon’s characterization is superb, delicately crafting Yetu, a historian of the wajinru (merpeople), who is responsible for holding the rememberings of the past within herself. While she alone must live with the endless torment and loneliness of her ancestors’ memories, her people are free to live their lives in naive bliss, for these memories are not theirs to endure. Being torn from the inside as she begins to lose herself, Yetu seeks peace. This peace, however, will doom not only her people, but the two-legs, her ancient kin, as well. We witness her hurt, her guilt, her strength, her resolve. We watch as she submits to despair, then pulls away from the precipice right before the flame of hope is extinguished. We observe her heart swell with love, and break into a million pieces with loss. Hers is a genuinely remarkable journey, and as a reader, it’s an honor to watch unfurl.

"At least with pain there was life, a chance at change and redemption."

The world we’re introduced to is our own, but exquisitely and skillfully suffused with the fantastical. The sea is magical, gifting life to those who would surely perish. The weather reflects the emotions exuded by the creatures seeking solace beneath the waves. There is honor and solidarity between different species, hunter and prey, mother and child. It is when the horrors of men casting pregnant slaves overboard their transport ships, do we see the gentle giants of the sea claim the young as their own, caring for them and protecting them from future heartache. Readers get small glimpses into the past of the wajinru, evolving from zoti aleyu, strange fish, to a whole and powerful chorus of the deep. All things are dazzling and devastating in equal measure, in a world where balance is of crucial importance.

I can sit here all day and continue to prattle on about the grandeur of this book, but I can tell you with the utmost sincerity that nothing I say will give it the justice it deserves. Gorgeous, immersive prose, precious moments of silent reflection, a love that breaks the shackles of the expected, it’s an experience you must undergo yourself to rightly savor. Please do yourself a favor and pick up The Deep; its beautiful complexity and striking message are only overshadowed by its heartrending passion. One of my favorite reads of the year – I cannot recommend it enough.

Note: A huge thank you to Saga Press for an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

As slave ships traveled to the Americas, slavers would often push pregnant women off the ship to their deaths. The Deep imagines what might have happened if some of those women had their babies – and their babies were able to breathe both in the water and in the air, as mermaids. As memories of the past are too much for many of the mermaids to bear, they only hold those memories once a year, while Yetu, the historian, bears the burden for the entire group. The Deep is her story.

This was quite good. I really liked the concept, the premise, and it was delivered upon in the real way that mattered – discussing what the past trauma of something like slavery can do to a group of people. I loved those aspects of it. The pain and anger all seemed justified and raw. The story itself was fine, but the premise and its corresponding philosophical discussion was the real winner here. The book was a bit disjointed, but that is explained at the end when you discover that the book was written by a number of people in something of a game of telephone. There’s one chapter, which, while I understand why it was in there, was jarring and really uncessary. Otherwise, though, this was a thought-provoking, meaningful and quick read that I’d recommend to anyone who likes a high concept premise.

For readers of Ta-nehisi Coates and Colson Whitehead that don’t mind a touch of science fiction – take a gander at this while you are waiting on the sure to be long hold list for The Water Dancer. 4 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley and Saga Press for the eARC, which I received in exchange for an unbiased review. The Deep will be released on 05 November, but you can put your copy on hold today!

The concept of this novella is so powerful that only the most precise of prose could carry its weight. Rivers Solomon is able to balance the emotional punches and the worldbuilding with careful structure that will keep readers centered in the moment.

As the historian of the wajinru, Yetu holds the history of all her people inside of her. Given that the ancestors discovered that they originate from the unborn babies of African women who were thrown off of slave ships to die in the middle of the ocean, Yetu struggles with the generational knowledge that she holds. The founders of the wajinru society felt that carrying around such a painful history would not be productive, so all other wajinru live their lives in the present with a yearly Remembering designed to provide them with the knowledge of their founding that creates an echo that will sustain them and remind them of their purpose. However, this year's Remembering ceremony is already late and Yetu finds she has reached her breaking point. What transpires next is a story of sacrifice, survival, and the power of memory and genuine connection.

I heard a lot about the Afrofuturist text The Deep and it did not disappoint. Rivers Solomon successfully investigates selfishness and sacrifice, collective and individual memory, and the power of connection. While the origin of the wajinru is indeed painful, Solomon's writing seems a hopeful reframed vision of how to incorporate and remember the past, particularly when viewed through the lens of the final three sentences of the novella. In addition, Oori's link to her own lack of personal and cultural history is also an excellent foil to the full history of the wajinru that Yetu felt burdened carrying. By creating a genuine connection between these two characters, I thought Yetu learned a great deal about relationships and the importance of her people's history.

Having listened to the song of the same name by The Clipping, this novella certainly offers a more extended look. In fact, in an afterward The Clipping discusses how the song and novella relate. The Clipping's view on the novella is that it is part of a game of artistic telephone with each telling of The Deep being productive and adding more to the mythology. The collaborative nature of all of these versions means the game could go on indefinitely with each new iteration offering more detail.

As a whole, I was really impressed with Solomon's novella, and, in fact, I wished it were longer. The world building that Solomon is able to provide in this short work made me yearn to know more about the wajinru.

I love the idea of this story more than I liked the book. I just wanted more; more of the history, more of the reasons behind the decision to make one person the keeper of the memories, more background on the surface dwellers/two legs, more about what happens next. If there is ever a prequel or sequel I will read it because there is so much more to the story then was in this book.

There aren't enough stars to tell you how much I loved this. Full of pain and heartache, but also hope and compassion. Sure to be on most award ballots next year. Don't miss it!