The historian of the water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard by slavers keeps all the memories of her people both painful and miraculous, until she discovers that their future lies in returning to the past. 100,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

"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." -- - (Baker & Taylor)

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. - (Simon and Schuster)

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. - (Simon and Schuster)

Rivers Solomon is the author of An Unkindness of Ghosts, and was 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 hold 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. Find them on Twitter @CyborgYndroid.

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 Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson in the 2015 musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda which he won a Grammy and Tony for. He also cowrote, produced, and stars in the film Blindspotting. 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. - (Simon and Schuster)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Solomon's second book (after An Unkindness of Ghosts, 2017) is inspired by a song, also called The Deep, by the hip-hop group Clipping (featuring Hamilton's Daveed Diggs). The book expands on the world of the aquatic beings descended from women thrown off slaver ships and left to drown during the Atlantic slave trade. Building off of the song's refrain y'all remember in particular, Solomon imagines a society of beings without individual memories known as wajinru, whose communal memory is held in one selected historian in the form of electrical signals. Yetu, the current historian, finds the continual remembering of her people's history, with all of its pain and tragedy, to be a crippling and devouring burden, so during the annual gathering in which she releases the accumulated history into the wajinru as a whole, she flees to the surface. Interspersing the collective memories of the wajinru with Yetu's encounters above water, Solomon's beautiful novella weaves together a moving and evocative narrative that imagines a future created from the scars of the past. Highly recommended for those interested in sf or fantasy that draws upon the legacies of colonialism and racism to imagine different, exciting types of futures. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Inspired by the Hugo Award-nominated song "The Deep" from Daveed Diggs's rap group, Clipping, this novella is set in an underwater universe inhabited by the water-breathing descendants of pregnant African women tossed overboard by slavers. All but the historian Yetu suppress their horrible memories, and the burdened Yetu finally rises to the surface to find new possibilities for her people. Diggs and other Clipping members are joined by Solomon, a John W. Campbell Award finalist for An Unkindness of Ghosts, to craft this work. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal Reviews

Yetu is the historian for the wajinru, an undersea population of merpeople. Their collective memory of their origins as pregnant African women thrown overboard by white slavers is held by Yetu alone. The wajinru exist in forgetfulness, as it has been decided that the agony of their past is too much to bear. The historian carries the burden until the Remembering, a yearly ritual that lets the historian share the memories to the population, then take them all back. Yetu struggles under the weight of her duty, and flees her home in hopes of escaping. But as she leaves behind her agony and meets the people of the land that her ancestors left long ago, her burden shifts to those who aren't ready to accept it. Yetu is tasked with finding a way to reconnect the past to all before her people's future is lost. This vivid, devastating work is in its third incarnation: it started with the inspired mythology created by techno-electro group Drexciya, morphed into a song by rap group Clipping (Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes), and then was turned to prose by Solomon (An Unkindness of Ghosts). VERDICT This slim story packs a huge punch. Beautiful and stark in its pain, this emotional journey is one that all readers should take, in order to remember the atrocities of slavery. [See "Fall Fireworks," LJ 8/19.]—Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton