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As evidenced by her encounter with the sharks, Yetu’s condition was worsening. With each passing year, she was less and less able to distinguish rememberings from the present. Our mothers were pregnant two-legs thrown overboard while crossing the ocean on slave ships. We were born breathing water as we did in the womb. We built our home on the ocean floor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers.” p. 28 Como decía al principio, un libro para releer, y de esos que dejan poso. Tan solo el final me dejó algo fría, pero eso no empaña lo interesante y reflexivo que me ha parecido esta novela. Yetu es una historiadora obligada a recordar y vivir una y mil veces el pasado de su pueblo y su origen, ella, y el resto de sirenas son descendientes de las mujeres embarazadas que se lanzaban al mar desde los barcos esclavistas por ser una carga molesta o enferma. A través de Yetu conocemos el momento en que nacen las wajinru, en el que se crea esta fascinante comunidad, su manera de relacionarse y de entenderse y la dureza de la vida para Yetu, que deber recordar una y otra vez estos espantosos momentos, ¿Pero es el olvido la solución?
Autistic Character(s): Yetu, the young historian whose point of view carries most of the book; and Oori, a human she befriends when she escapes to the surface. Stories (and what is history if not a bunch of stories we tell about ourselves?) act much like a game of telephone. They are passed down, and thus they survive, but their shape changes as they get interpreted differently by every individual. In The Deep we are told that the role of Historian is one handed down from generation to generation, and we are presented with three different bearers of the title: Zoti, Basha, and Yetu. And through them we get three interpretations of history. To Zoti, the first Historian, it is vital to the continued survival of their people. To Basha, it is a call to action, past hurts fueling a righteous rage at present injustice. And to Yetu, it is simply a burden, too deep and heavy to carry on her own.⠀ The Deep is a product of succeeding projects: First, a concept by Detroit electro-pop duo called Drexciya; then, a song by rap group clipping. featuring Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, for NPR’s This American Life; and finally, this book. This is a great legacy of Afrofuturism, the blend of story to story to story. But, there is a problem. While Yetu’s brain chemistry makes her a good Historian, she is easily overwhelmed by the weight of her people’s history. She loses herself in unsolicited Rememberings for weeks, and the process erodes her individuality and her sense of self-preservation. What makes it worse is that she’s lonely. No one around her, not even her own mother, remembers enough to understand how painful the History is to keep, and the wajinru themselves have developed a culture to be more dismissive of the past.
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There are parts of the book where the perspective changes from first person singular to first person plural as Solomon immerses her readers in two Remembrances. It is through the collective voice of the ancestors and the living wajinru that we understand some of the painful history haunting Yetu. The Deep has gone through three major rounds of Telephone to find itself now in book form, and might continue indefinitely, happily taking on the adaptations of each new interpreter, into the future”. – clipping. p. 156 There were so many incredible concepts introduced, interesting side-stories and more...and they were only told in snippets...leaving me feeling like the story was unfinished and I was left in the dark. Tor.com (2019-10-03). "Announcing Sorrowland, a New Work of Gothic Fiction from Rivers Solomon". Tor.com . Retrieved 2020-11-05. Heller, Jason (7 November 2019). " 'The Deep' Sings With Many Voices". NPR.org . Retrieved 2020-11-05.
Worse, the wajinru didn’t know who was to succeed Yetu. They may not have had the memories to understand the importance of this fully, but they had an inkling. It had been plain to all for many years that Yetu was a creature on the precipice, and without a successor in place, they’d be lost. They’d have to improvise. Their second book, The Deep, (2019, Saga Press), is based on the Hugo-nominated song of the same name by the experimental hip-hop group Clipping, and depicts a utopian underwater society built by the water-breathing descendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships. The Deep won the 2020 Lambda Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo awards. [15] [16] [17] The Deep is a 2019 fantasy book by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. It depicts an underwater society built by the water-breathing descendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships. The book was developed from a song of the same name by Clipping, an experimental hip-hop trio. It won the Lambda Literary Award, and was nominated for Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Even though Yetu always kept herself tense against the ocean’s intrusions, they found their way in; but with her senses freshly unreined, the rush of feeling was dizzying. This was nothing like the faraway throbbing she’d grown used to when she threw all her energy into repelling the world outside. The push and pull of nearby currents upended her. The flutter of a school of fangfish reverberated deep in her chest. How did other wajinru manage this all the time? also was not expecting a really beautiful f/f romance and I loved that! (the wajinru are also all intersex and choose their own gender, if any)Absolutely moving though, even if you don't fully understand why it is slowly ripping your heart out of your chest.
Because of the Disney animated film, The Little Mermaid, we may feel inclined to think of mermaids as an appropriate subject for children. But it was, in fact, never thus, and folktales involving mermaids rarely have happy endings.Pitlor, Heidi and Gay, Roxane (editors), The Best American Short Stories 2018 Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2018.