I had a hard time getting into this narrative. The premise was amazing, and there were some moments of promise, but it didn't have quite the cohesion I was expecting. Maybe I should go back and listen to the music that inspired it? I did like that the authors said in the afterward that the music and book went together like a game of telephone--things got distorted and morphed, sometimes for the better, between genres--and that the listener/reader is able to decide what is "true" based on their own preferences.

This was so, so beautiful. Rivers Solomon has this amazing talent for writing about incredibly painful topics in a way that makes them bearable. Instead of being overwhelmed with dread, I'm all tender and open and ready to receive the beautiful, devastating gut punch of sorrow and joy when it inevitably comes.

Whole this obviously touched me deeply, it also made me think a lot about loneliness, community and our responsibilities to each other, and the things we gain from validating and sharing each other's pain. Just wow. There's not much more I can say other than I loved it.

YES! I'm a bit traumatized by this book but I loved it so incredibly much. Can't wait to listen to the audiobook and recommend this title to many of my customers.

Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect from this but it wasn't what I got. It was beautiful and haunting and I could have read so much more. Solomon has very deft hand in writing the inner landscape of characters, and their work was no different here. Yetu was vividly portrayed and felt extremely real. Her people are fascinating and a powerful picture of survival. What reached out and touched me most was how neurodivergent Yeti and Oori are, as well as hints of the previous Historian, and how obvious it is on the page. How treasured it is to read as someone on that spectrum myself. The Deep isn't gentler than An Unkindness of Ghosts, but it's less graphic. So if you'd avoided reading Solomon's writing before, this is a perfect introduction.

An incredibly interesting reimagining of what happened to the slaves that got thrown off the ships while crossing the ocean.

Rivers Solomon recently wrote on their twitter feed: "me discussing writing today with a friend: i wanna be murdering ppl with every line... to clarify, i mean murdering readers. emotionally." This applies, I think to Solomon's new science fiction novella THE DEEP (I received an advance copy from the publisher in return for agreeing to write a review). The book just slays me. It is about about trauma and history, and about remembering and forgetting.
The book refers to the real history of the Atlantic slave trade, but also to an imaginative alternate history, or counter-mythology, that was invented by the Detroit techno band Drexciya. In a series of releases between 1992 and 2002, Drexciya tells us the story of an underwater realm in the mid-Atlantic, "populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women thrown off of slave ships during the Middle Passage who had learned to breathe underwater in their mother's wombs." These merpeople and their descendants establish a utopian society in the sea, free from the war and racism on the surface. In this way Drexciya imagines a partial escape from the horrors of modern history, and reclaims what the philosopher Paul Gilroy calls the "Black Atlantic."
Other artists have further developed Drexciya's vision. Ellen Gallagher's ongoing "Watery Ecstatic" series of mixed media artworks (2001- ) offers a Black feminist, and also "posthuman and interspecies," reworking of the Drexciya myth. More directly relevant to Solomon's novella, the avant-rap band Clipping released a song called "The Deep" in 2017. This song is set in the world imagined by Drexciya, and brings its narrative into the present. The song envisions the underwater realm threatened, today in the 21st century, by global warming and undersea oil drilling, and imagines the Drexciyans' apocalyptic response to these dangers.
Rivers Solomon picks up Clipping's scenario, and once more reimagines it. (In an Afterword to the book, the band compares the transmission from Drexciya to Clipping to Solomon as like a game of Telephone, in which each reiteration of a phrase creatively expands and transforms it). Solomon gives us the story of Yetu, the official Historian of the merpeople, who are here called wajinru rather than Drexciyans. Her job is to remember their past. She hoards the memories of these aquatic human beings, all the way back to their ancestral origins, when their first generation was born underwater from the wombs of kidnapped African women thrown from slave ships into the open ocean. By remembering, in excruciating detail, everything that has ever happened to the wajinru, Yetu grounds them in history. On the one hand, she uses her knowledge to remind them who they are. On the other hand, by remembering for all the others, she frees them from the burden of their history, allowing them to forget, and thereby to enjoy life in the present.
The history of the slave trade is deeply traumatic, and Yetu suffers mightly from being forced to remember it. She experiences directly, in mind and in body, the tensions that animate her whole society. On the one hand, to forget your history is to become unmoored, to feel a kind of hollowness, a cavity (a word the novella uses several times). Without some sense of growth and development across time, there can be no feeling of accomplishment or achievement. On the other hand, to remember your history is to be traumatized by it anew, and to feel unable to escape it. As Karl Marx famously wrote, "the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
Yetu is literally trapped by this dilemma. Her job of remembering and preserving the past makes it impossible for her to function in the present -- let alone to enjoy it. But by taking the task of remembrance upon herself, she allows her people both to have fulfilling lives in the present, and to maintain the historical background that they need to thrive. She is torn between the need for self-care, and the need to hold things together for her people and for the ancestors. THE DEEP is really about how Yetu negotiates between these two needs, both of which are crucial to her survivial, and yet which seem to contradict one another. It's a powerful and affecting book; you can't read it without being deeply shaken by the conflicts that it depicts in such vivid prose.

I had never heard of the song that inspired this book, nor had I heard of the musicians who wrote the song. I just read the blurb about this book and it sounded interesting. This book was not at all what I thought it would be, but it ended up being a very enjoyable experience. However, one of the things I kept think about the whole time I read this book was how much it reminded me of the Giver and Jonas being the RECEIVER at a young age and having to deal not just with the joys, but the awful pain of the history of his people. In this case, Yetu is the HISTORIAN of her people and she is also the keeper of her people's history, all the way back to the beginning. The book shifts time and memory in sections and sometimes that confused me, but overall, I thought it was well written and it also ended well. I'm very glad this book crossed my radar. And I'm now checking out the band, Clipping, even though their style of music is not my usual.

Thanks to NetGalley, Rivers Solomon, the members of Clipping, and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley. Also, Rivers Solomon’s preferred pronoun is they/them.

I pre-ordered this novella in July, and at the time a group of people were upset that Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in the live-action Disney remake of the Little Mermaid. While people kept claiming that it was because her hair wasn’t red, the “backlash” basically bullied down to Bailey being black because some stupid/racist people thought black mermaids weren’t a thing. I was finding books about black mermaids to mention and this showed up. So, I pre-ordered. Then I got approval via Netgalley.
Look, the book is good enough that my pre-order is still in. Well, that’s not exactly true. I cancelled the kindle pre-order and pre-ordered the hardcover (from an Indie bookstore, so the fact that I am paying 20 bucks for a book that isn’t even 200 pages should tell you everything you need to know about this book).
It’s not the little mermaid. It isn’t.
Solomon’s book is inspired by Clipping’s song of the same name (the song appeared on an episode of This American Life) and the group has written the afterword. The story is about Yetu a member of a group of undersea creatures who are the descendants of women who were throwed overboard from slave ships.
But the book is in large part about the power – both good and bad – of memory. An while the timing is undoubtedly a fluke, it is important to note the response to the 1619 Project. If you have not read the NY Times Magazine, please do so. What it does challenge, in fact, is how we view the past and how we need to face and acknowledge that past as well as its effects if we are to move forward. Tetu is caught in the past and her response to gain her freedom details why knowledge of the past is so important.
The novella is in many ways a more interior story than an exterior story. It is to Rivers Solomon’s credit that their writing keeps the reader, and this is down, in part, though the use of two different types of storytelling. But the two styles are blended by Rivers Solomon’s skilled use of craft making the story not only strong and engrossing but also engaging the reader, almost bringing the reader into the time and place.

The Deep is an imaginative snapshot into a world where pregnant African slaves were tossed overboard during the Transatlantic Passage only to engender dangerous, hive mind mermaids. The novella features the loosest of plots and is best read by those who enjoy meandering stream-of-consciousness writing in which the narrator/time period is not clearly delineated.

Yetu is a historian for her people, holding all of the painful memories of their collective past while they live carefree 362 days of the year. For three days each year, she takes them through The Remembering during which they receive the memories of their ancestors. The Remembering doesn’t go as planned, and Yetu finds herself physically lost while trying to find her own soul and what she cares about most.

The writing is dreamlike and difficult to follow. This prevents the reader from feeling immersed in the story or grasping the setting and atmosphere of the novella. Yetu and her story are turned inward and consistently introspective, yet a couple of the sparse characters feel believable and distinct, including Amaba.

The pacing is inconsistent with the first 75% dragging across the bottom of the ocean floor at a crab’s pace.

Overall, if you enjoy innovative, nonlinear, and dreamlike novels, this is a great, quick read.

The Deep is inventive, well-written, and takes science fiction in new directions (which, these days, is not always easy to say).

A highly recommended and well-conceived story, and a fine example of the world-building that makes this genre sing at its best.

4.5 stars I am not a huge fan of Clipping, who wrote the song this book is loosely based off of, but this book is amazing. Mermaids, history, and together before I’m moving to West Africa? YES! This is going to be an important book that is quick to read. It tells a powerful story of not just the mythical creatures born of African slave women thrown overboard, but also the sordid story of human history. And the pointed lesson driven into the heart is how important history is for remembering, grieving, moving forward, and having roots. It’s a fast and deep read told slightly out of a nonlinear timeframe, which typically irks me but it just makes sense with the way the main character Remembers events and the way most of the world tells cyclical history. **Disclaimer: I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review

The Deep is one of the most meaningful reads I’ve experienced.. The central concept is fascinating and heartbreaking, imagining an alternative past for the African slave women who drowned in the Atlantic. It’s filled with beautiful imagery juxtaposed against the deep pain that permeates throughout their descendants. I was especially interested in the concept of emotional and memory transfer by a full society to a single person. In this instance, it’s a single individual sacrificing her mind to encapsulate the pain of her people’s past. That kind of sacrifice is both beautiful and terrifying to witness, and it nearly drives her mad. This is definitely an abstract style of writing, especially in the dialogue presentation. Expect to find vivid imagery and character introspection.

NOTE: I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

Though it wasn't my favorite style of writing (I'm someone who prefers more concrete details and worldbuilding), this contains lovely and elegant prose perfect for those who enjoy metaphorical musings.