I'm sitting here, at this moment, in my chair attempting to figure out how to summarize/express my feelings about this book. How does a book under 200 pages stump me in terms of writing a review. Make sure that you listen to the song The Deep by clipping. Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.

If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity-and own who they really are. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past-and about the future of her people. 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 remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one-the historian.

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. The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society-and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’ rap group Clipping.

The deep by rivers solomon