The Deep - Book Review

The Deep
by Rivers Solomon
With Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes

What is it about:
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.

What did I think of it:
From what I understand this novella is based on the song The Deep written by David Diggs and his rap group Clipping. I have not listened to this song, so I can't tell you anything more about the song.

The book however is beautiful, haunting, and emotional.

Yetu carries the history of her people, and is constantly burdened by the flashbacks, and the emotions and hurt that come with it. Only during the Remembrance once a year she is free of having to remember. It's slowly driving her mad and so she escapes to the surface.

The way the barrage of memories haunts and hurts Yetu is painful to read. The glimpses of the past of her people, connected to real horrors from our world's past is confrontational. I will confess I don't think I'll ever be capable of truly understanding how it must feel to be cut off from your past, your history, to be drifting, unmoored. This novella gives a glimpse of what that must be.

Yet there is also hope. Yetu's flight from her people sets things in motion for her and those she left behind that might bring healing.

All in all a powerful read.

Why should you read it:
It's beautiful and haunting


buy from bookdepository