The Deep

Octavia E. Butler meets Marvels Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Awardnominated song The Deep from Daveed Diggss rap group Clipping. Yetu holds the memories for her peoplewater-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave ownerswho live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save onethe 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 responsibilitiesand discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own pastand about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, theyll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identityand own who they really are. The Deep is a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gazea superb, multilayered work, (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.