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The Deep

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The Deep

Written by: Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
Narrated by: Daveed Diggs
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About this listen

Winner of the 2021 Audie Award

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.
Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Hip-Hop African Fantasy
All stars
Most Relevant
Oh my gosh. This book spoke to many hurt parts of me. This book was like a hug of affirmation.

It both questioned system, and didn’t. It let the reader question the systems without directly addressing them. In other books I normally attribute indirectness to laziness on the authors’ part, but in this book the systems and their impacts are addressed so thoughtfully that it is clear that the intent in not over explaining questions of systemic morality is to demand the reader apply their imaginations to the problem, thereby creating an intimacy between the reader and the perspectives of characters.

This book was so thoughtfully written, it felt as though every line of it was a move in chess, each detail necessary to the telling of the intricate story. I am shocked at the world building and character development that these authors accomplished in the length of a three hour audiobook. My favourite book of 2023, just in time for the end of the year.

QUEER it’s so lovely and affirming, fav of 2023

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Instantly captivating. I listened to this in one day. I couldn’t ‘put it down’. Such an ingenious premise turning something so horrid into something wondrous and full of hope and tenderness.
Highly recommend.

Captivating and Beautiful

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Stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking story and a truly brilliant use of imagination and history that you can do deeply be immersed into. Stunning stunning job!

Sad to of finished

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loved the concepts and characters and species and realtions and world. I I I i

loved the genderqueerness of it all.

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Amazing story of resilience, connection, and the horror and beauty of history. Where does the individual end and the collective begin? What influence do our histories and lack thereof carry on our way of being?

Hauntingly and deliriously beautiful

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