The Deep by Rivers Solomon

The Deep

Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson

S&S/Saga Press · Paperback · August 4, 2020

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.

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Who it’s for
A compact, immersive blend of folklore, memory, and social reckoning.
Genres
Contemporary Fantasy, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Sci-Fi
Published
S&S/Saga Press, August 4, 2020

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About this book

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.

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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.

Myth and Memory

A compact, immersive blend of folklore, memory, and social reckoning.

Come here for

  • mythic undersea atmosphere
  • black history threaded through music

Expect

  • lyrical, darkly original texture
  • fantasy with a toolkit-like afterglow

Where it sits

Sci-Fi48%
LGBTQ+ Fiction43%
Contemporary Fantasy33%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Sci-Fi
  • Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
  • Black Fiction
Authors
Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson
Publisher
S&S/Saga Press
Published
August 4, 2020
Format
Paperback
Reading lane
Sci-Fi