For centuries the wajinru, who call themselves the Chorus of the Deep (though a two-legged surface dweller might be tempted to describe them as mermaids), have lived a carefree life, hunting and mating as the needs take them. The novel grants its readers a look not only at a unique interpretation of one of fantasy’s classic races, but into the deeply troubled mind of a member of that species.
In 2019 that novel was released, along with a trio of songs by clipping. Upon hearing it, Saga Press Senior Editor Navah Wolfe immediately sought out author Rivers Solomon, fresh from her debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and commissioned the award-winning novelist for the complex task of transmuting a song into a novel. This single, “The Deep” would go on to be nominated for the 2018 Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). Inspired by the tidbits of lore revealed about the album’s lyric-less techno-soundscapes, rapper Daveed Diggs, as part of his experimental hip-hop group, clipping., released a single that further expanded on the world.
The idea of an undersea world populated by the mutated children of drowned, pregnant slave women first surfaced as the backstory for the album, “Harnessed the Storm,” the first in a series of seven linked concept albums by Detroit-based electronic duo Drexciya (William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes). Yetu was so relatable to me because of all the pain, confusion, resistance, love and respect that she feels towards her responsibility to remember the past.Like its aquatic main characters, “The Deep” has a rather complicated history. But Yetu soon realizes her true power, and what she must do to save her people. That remembering is destroying her, so she swims away from home to heal and forget.
Where an underwater society of people protect the Deep, protect the memory of their first mothers, the pregnant African women thrown overboard by slavers in the Middle Passage, and have the power to guide the ocean towards calm or chaos.Īt the center of this story is Yetu, the young historian who is charged with remembering all of the pain and joy of her people. The Deep started as a song by then expanded to a book by which felt like reading a movie.Įscape into a world where we the land-dwelling two-legged are not alone.
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