Rating: 3/5
Spoiler Alert! The novella may only be 100 pages, but it can still be spoilt if you're not careful.
As part of an effort to read more diversely, I picked The Deep from Vy's (Literary Lip Balms) list of Fiction Books by Black and Minority Authors. The premise instantly intrigued me, and then I saw it was based on a song by Daveed Digg's group clipped. and I knew it had potential. I listened to the song, downloaded the ebook, and got myself a cup of coffee.
The Deep is a novella based on the premise that African slave women thrown overboard on the journey to America gave birth to water-breathing babies who went on to build their own society underwater. At the heart of this wajinru society is the Historian, the figure that holds on to all the memories of the wajinru, keeping everything from the moment of their inception, right through to the present day. The Historian holds these so that the other wajinru can be free from the trauma that is in their past.
It was the origin of the wajinru which intrigued me so much. There's no ignoring the cruelty of the action itself, but the transformation of human to sea creature, changing death into new life, was a transformative moment that had me hooked. Life was created and sustained by the ocean.
Despite liking the protagonist, Yetu, and sympathising with her position, I couldn't find an emotional connection to this book. As Historian, she was an outsider to her society. When we first join the narrative, Yetu is close to being eaten by sharks, so lost in memories belonging to other people. It was easy to sympathise with her position; sometimes it's hard enough to process your own memories, let alone 600 years worth from your whole species. And yet, I didn't feel all that much for her as a character; there was no fear going into the Remembrance, no joy when she swam away from it all. Even when she met Oori, I wasn't particularly emotional about either one of their fates. I was more concerned about the wajinru themselves.
Thinking about it, that's where The Deep lost me. I wanted to know more about the role of memory in the lives of the wajinru, and what it meant that Yetu was rejecting her role. How did the wajinru, who appeared to be in pain and stirring up a storm, come to the decision that they would collectively hold memory? And how did that decision change their society? Knowing where they came from was seen by Zoti as a tragedy that needed hiding, and yet, by the end of the novella, the wajinru have seemingly accepted that knowing their heritage is important to who they are in the present.
The Deep is an interesting story, but novellas always leave me dissatisfied; there's so much more that could be said. It's the problem almost all readers have when it comes to finishing a book, so I appreciated the note from clipping. which explained their view of The Deep as something similar to the game 'Telephone'. It's a narrative with many authors, and each author transforms the story further.
Comments