Into the World of Drowned Women

A Pomegranate Hive Recommended Read: Rivers Solomon’s “The Deep”

Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash

Engaging with The Deep was a thrilling experience for me. There is a lot going on with this narrative on an intertextual level that, at first glance, seems to hide behind the fairly straightforward story arc. However, upon closer inspection, it takes you by the throat and doesn’t let you go.

This novelette is an homage and expansion upon rap group, Clipping’s, song from which the novelette derives its namesake. The song, evocative and multilayered in its own right, brims with story, serving as an entrypoint for Solomon to enter the world created by the lyrics. Inspired by what they’ve heard, Solomon began the task of fleshing out their own interpretive story built and born upon this vocal artistry. After Solomon published, Clipping’s then produced new tracks that aligned with and grew out of Solomon’s story, which, again, was fleshed out of their original song.

This is literally great art begetting great art at hand. The artistries of rap group and writer continue to converse with one another, building collaboratively yet individually, where central themes are doing and saying different things (think of it as living their own lives) yet ultimately remain part of the same conversations and communities. There is something very special here that should be noted (or, in my belief, congratulated — communal art, to me, is exhilarating beyond words). In Solomon and Clipping’s case, this shared center is their vision of Afrofuturism, yet another canon to which the two works contribute to. Here is yet another meta upon meta artwork birthing.

In Relationship — Indigenous Mythologies

In my own work, I like to explore the erased mythologies of the mother culture from which I come. We have staggeringly beautiful creation myths, multifaceted, lush and vivid, and wrought with embodied worldviews. I often find myself exhausted with the obsession of Greek mythology when there are so many creation myths and pantheons across cultures equally breathtaking and exquisite. Space should be provided for these narratives to be told, and not simply upon the margins but upfront, centered, and advocated for global orientation.

Myths of origins are wonderful starting places to begin the topic of cultural loss via the diaspora; the search for collective, indigenous memory; and the ever ongoing healing process from the ashes of colonization that are not historical, distant topics, but rather very real realities that inform how we place ourselves and navigate within this shared world.

The Mythology of the Waters

Solomon’s narrative is, in fact, a myth of origin, an exploration of memory, and a fleshing of the deep itself. On short kind, the story centers on Yetu, the historian, who holds the all the memories of her people — her people being an adapted, evolved human/fish prototype birthed from utero into waters from the many pregnant African slave women that had been thrown into the Atlantic by their slavers (case point here: grounded in a point of historical disruption and trauma). Because of the horrible condition of their beginnings, her people have chosen to forget; or rather, the first few of her people decided that the truth of their origins were too painful to bear and, therefore, surely should be forgotten.

Days, decades, and centuries pass, and now her people live idyllic, peaceful lives in the deep. All, save the one historian per life time tasked with holding all memory (makes me think a la The Giver). As we all well know, memory of trauma, whether there is love and miracle and joy as well, truly can kill — and it does — it eats away at Yetu’s life, and there is not a soul amongst her people who understands.

She runs away, choosing to abandon the responsibilities placed upon her by her people and ancestors alike. Yetu seeks the surface, where some humans still live, though there are overtones hinting at traumatic disaster (my guess is global warming, folks). There, her ideals are challenged as she meets and builds relations with the “two-legs,” who have lost everything and yearn for memory of all that had been lost. This, clashing against her ideology for leaving the past behind. Backdropping the plot is the very soon end of the world where both land and sea, alike, will perish unless, of course, Yetu returns to her imprisoned role as bearer of all memory, alone, in pain, with no one that could truly know her.

Story Matter

This work is so much less about point A to B, or linear beginning to end, though it appears that way upon first, surface level glance. It is much more about the binding we all hold — to memory, to trauma, to community, to nature, to responsibility, to identity, and to so much more. Arguably, the story arc ceases to be center and the study of shared condition takes priority.

I have a colleague who often asks me what I’m currently reading. Mostly, I share the literary stuff in line with the forever present stuffiness and ego of the academy, but this time, I shared this novella of fish folk as representative of an Afro-Indigenous future reimagined as a pathway for Black folk to reclaim the narratives they take and define their futures with.

I have read a lot of works of Afrofuturism because they gave me permission to explore Indigenous Futures, of which have always existed, but perhaps are slow coming in gaining entrance into the larger publishing stream. This colleague of mine lit up, explaining how important it is for the Black community to access fantastical worlds filled with resource and joy and autonomy unburdened (or, perhaps, healed) from the terrors of the colonial powers — how beautiful their futures could have been if they had been left alone. This re-imagination is something he can only hope for his children to have as they orient themselves toward their own futures.

The Ending; Or, My Ending

This was a bumbling review than most, but the conversation with my peer was a warm one and we got to dialogue about the importance of diverse narrative, why it is essential that the world allow more, and, most importantly, that they are actually published, represented, and accessible at the frequency of their white counterparts.

I feel like I don’t understand The Deep to its fullest intentions. I think I may need to listen to the extended songs that have come out as a by-product of it. Also, I don’t think I need to understand it to its full intentions. What I do know is that having engaged with it feels like an honor. It feels like having sat with an elder. It feels like thinking and reckoning with the past. It feels like it is creating a glorious future.

Mabuhay, I’m EA Garcia, and I’m a thriving eater of story. I reflect on all my reads across genres, forms, and categories. Since I only read BIPOC work and prioritize small, indie, and micro press work, you might find a new read! I also write on academia, publishing, & decolonization, ftw.

Feel free to recommend things in the comments below! I LOVE recs: particularly books, dramas, manga, & webtoons! Try to keep it BIPOC and marginalized ❤

Read about WHY I only read BIPOC folk, get a taste for my stance on decolonizing bookshelves, or look at some funky reviews of storywork!