The Deep

The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, 166 pages

During the Atlantic slave trade, pregnant slaves were thrown overboard from ships, as they were loud, distracting, and needed more resources than other slaves. Solomon's groundbreaking novella — and the great song of the same name by experimental rap group clipping. — take this horrifying history and posit that perhaps the unborn children of the drowned were born as water-breathing wajinru that create a society at the bottom of the ocean. Even better, a society that is free of the memories of their forbears and the horrors of slavery.

Well, free, except for one. Yetu is the latest historian for the wajinru, tasked with being the sole vessel for her people's cultural memory except for an annual remembrance, in which she temporarily shares the information with everyone else. Yetu hates her role, which has forced her to bear something that is unbearable for a single person, and yearns to escape.

I won't continue with the plot any more than that. What I will say is that this is an amazing novella that explores collective memory, the physical and emotional toll of bearing witness to ancestral mistreatment, and the problem with completely forgetting the past. It's by no means an easy read, but it is a fantastic one and one that I highly recommend. It's amazing how much Solomon packs into such a short book.