Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep,
a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory,
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 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.
The Deep is
“a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gaze…a 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.
