Her people are conditioned to forget all the traumas of their species’ creation and existence. While Yetu is young, she feels old, at least from her own perspective. However we come to The Deep, the story is told through the eyes of one particular wajinru, the relatively young Yetu. From a third perspective, it is a parable about the greedy rapine of the seas – and of the land – by those who only see the Earth as a resource to be exploited until it is sucked dry.Īs is fitting for a story with so many creators, the narrative is braided so that all of those perspectives bleed into one single story – and yet have arteries that reach into all its corners. From another, it is a reclamation of the holocaust of the African-American experience, that of the deaths and depredations of the slave trade. It is as strange and marvelous as the wide, deep ocean that serves as its setting, It’s as intimate as one singular being’s pain, and as vast as the broad sweep of history.įrom one perspective, it is the story of Yetu, the historian of her underwater-dwelling people. The Deep was nothing like what I expected. So we come to The Deep, a novella that was on multiple “best of” lists at the end of the year and looks to pick up a few more kudos by the time the book world has wrung the last of the juice out of 2019. Particularly as the titles that make the Nebula list are generally eligible for the Hugo Awards, and the nominations for that are due in three weeks.
In this Sunday’s Sunday Post I mentioned that the recently announced list of 2019 Nebula Awards Finalists had, let’s call it informed, this week’s reviews. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity-and own who they really are.
Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past-and about the future of her people. 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 remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one-the historian.
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. Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Published by Gallery / Saga Press on November 5, 2019
Genres: Afrofuturism, fantasy, historical fantasy Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalleyįormats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
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