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A story of mythology, Afrofuturism, and memory.

The Deep

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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.

Authors

© Martha Levine

Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon is the author of An Unkindness of Ghosts, and is a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award finalist for Best New Writer. They graduated from Stanford University with a degree in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Michener Center for Writers. Though originally from the United States, they currently live in Cambridge, England, with their family. The Deep is their second book.

© Suzy Poling

rap group Clipping

Daveed Diggs is an actor, singer, producer, writer and rapper. He is the vocalist of the experimental hip hop group Clipping. Diggs originated the role of, and won a Grammy and Tony for, the Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson in the 2015 musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Find him on Twitter @DaveedDiggs. William Hutson is a composer, known for Room 237 (2012), The Mayor (2017) and Ten Minutes Is Two Hours (2013). He is part of the rap group Clipping. Find him on Twitter @clppng. Jonathan Snipes is a composer and sound designer for Film and Theater living in Los Angeles. He occasionally teaches sound design in the theater department at UCLA, and is a member of the rap group Clipping. Find him at jonat8han.com.

Book Details

Publisher Saga Press
Genre Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Publication Date Nov 05 2019
ISBN 9781534439863

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