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The Deep
By Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes
Narrated by Daveed Diggs / 4 hours 1 minute
Bookseller recommendation
If you enjoyed A Song Below Water, then you’ll love The Deep.
“This book has the power to transform. The approach to trauma (both individual and generational), the world building, the relationships... Solomon has created something undeniably special and incredibly important. And the mythology? I am blown away. Give me more Black mermaids STAT!”
Britt, Second Star to the Right
ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group clipping
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.
Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.
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| Author | Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes |
| Narrator | Daveed Diggs |
| ISBN | 9781508280286 |
| Length | 4 hours 1 minute |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster Audio |
| Publication date | November 5, 2019 |
| Edition | Unabridged |
| Libro.fm rank | #76 Overall |
| Genre rank | #2 in Apocalyptic and Dystopian |