Trigger Warnings: Memories of slavery, suicide attempt
Synopsis: 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.
Review: Yetu is a keeper for memories of all of her fellow water-dwelling creatures. She occasionally allows the memories to flow into her people temporarily. This is a similar concept in The Giver, but it's interesting to see this idea form around merpeople. Yetu is a very emotional creature, and I felt for her as she struggled with the pain of dark memories. We quickly learn what a toll it takes on Yetu as she alone has to constantly deal with memories of where she came from. This also startles her and she feels like she has to run away from her people and the memories. I'm sure many people can relate to the pain memories often hold, so Yetu wanting to flee from her memories was incredibly realistic.
Yetu has a lot of growth during The Deep as she has to navigate new knowledge of the world above the water. As interesting as Yetu's underwater world was, I loved seeing her interact with humans. It felt like personal growth of understanding people who are different from you. Particularly as Yetu explained that the idea of gender is self-made in her people, but she learns it isn't the same with humans. I wish we had a little more of this dissection of gender, but I understand this is a short book and there isn't room for every conversation. As a side point, I listened to the song that inspired this book. I'm honestly not a big fan of Daveed Diggs' voice, but I do like that he narrated the audiobook since he sang the song that inspired it.
Really cool novella that showed off a new take on mermaids.
4 howls
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