Welcome to Litsy!

I'm listening to The Deep on Scribd. Check it out: https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/390805927

Part of my Black women authors challenge. So not my genre. However it was really stunning work and a fast read. Good to stretch every once in awhile.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Deep/Rivers-Solomon/9781534439870

This is like a modern day myth. Originating from an album by Drexciya, ‘Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller‘, it evolved into a song by Clipper, then written in lyrical words into a novella unlike anything I‘ve read before. Extremely creative and quite sorrowful, it‘s the story of mermaid-like sea creatures born from the birth of pregnant slave women thrown overboard during the slave trades and the historian that holds the memories.

I finished this today. It was really interesting. I thought it was a great concept. Parts of the story felt like poetry. It spans generations of the wajinru and humans alike. It is sad, but ultimately the story of family and love. *TW for suicidal ideation.* My tea snack today was homemade biscotti made by my daughter and it was delicious.

Mixed feelings. I liked the story, how the author, inspired by a song, create a story about what happened to some pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard by their owners due to sickness or overboard. You will feel how painful is to remember through Yetu‘s voice, responsible to remember to transmit the history, to maintain their identity, pertinence in the community but so hard😢Some parts for me were isolated from the story. 3.7⭐️

Visual recap of the books I own that I read in 2021! Happy New Year.

Currently reading.

I found this really fascinating, and the afterward is worth reading about how the project evolved from mostly instruments music to song to novella. It takes one of the horrors of enslavement - pregnant women thrown overboard from slave ships - and imagines a world where the children survive as a sea people. The study of collective trauma and memory and how to handle as an individual and community was really powerful.

I discovered this audio book on a list Modern Mrs Darcy posted and I‘m really enjoying it. Sometimes I‘m confused but it‘s haunting and fantastic

I am posting one book per day from my to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new - don‘t judge me I have a lot of books.
Join the fun if you want. This is day 262.
#bookstoread
#tbrpile
#bookstagram

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The idea behind this story - the creation of a species from the unborn babies of African slaves thrown overboard ships - was immediately intriguing to me. I did love most of this novella, though it was occasionally difficult to follow. Overall it‘s a powerful novel about history, trauma, and remembering.
This was a book riot #gettbr recommendation.

A quick and powerful exploration of generational trauma ,coming of age , and fate v free will. This novella takes a spin on a dark history through a fantastical exploration of blackness through the lens of merpeople. Though the story focuses on a fantastical underwater civilization there are many poignant connects to the collective past of the black diaspora . There‘s a lot of meat in this very short book !

I just know this is going to break my heart.

Fun #twofortuesday! Finding book club books is hard. I really liked Lovecraft Country and Mexican Gothic - my book club had really lively conversations and competing theories for both, + they were both well-written and fun to read.

2. The tagged book is highly recommended. The format and subject matter stretched everyone‘s imagination in such a fun way, plus, the story has such an interesting backstory (the clipping. song, etc.) to delve into.

Yetu is her people's historian and holds the memories of their entire existence inside of herself to protect her people from their painful origins. When these memories combined with her existing sensitivities to sound and movement become too much to bear alone, Yetu faces a difficult choice between dying and running away. I really enjoyed this book. It was intriguing, and dove into shared cultural trauma and the different ways people handle it.

Spending a relaxing day outside finishing my audiobook when suddenly: "the audiobook that you are currently listening to, and are likely upset that you listened to too quickly (were you at double speed? I know you were)..." ? I'm not quite at double speed, just 1.25x, but close enough!

Another new book for my ever growing tbr shelves. I just can't control myself sometimes. #tbrpile

I loved it! I thought it was poetic and visceral and beautiful.

Imagine if the pregnant slaves thrown overboard during the middle passage went on to have children that survived & built a society underwater. That's the premise of the book, inspired by a rap song by Daveed Diggs. The story reminds me of The Giver, with 1 individual carrying the societies painful history. I read this after visiting the National Underground Railroad Center & had that fresh in my mind, which gave the story a deeper impact.

4/5

This novella is fascinating. It's inspired by a song of the same name by The Clippings (and the audiobook is read by member, Daveed Diggs). It's hard to describe beyond that it's about the pain and isolation that living with painful histories can cause.

It's was a great read, and I really enjoyed the audiobook.

#bookspin #doublebookspin #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

Super excited for my April #bookspinbingo with The Deep for my #bookspin and First Art Kit as my #doublebookspin

@TheAromaofBooks

Don‘t think I can finish on audio. Thought it may be better on audio, but I think the pacing has been difficult to follow. Maybe a reread for print later. I am obsessed with the cover and the idea though.

Confusing and at times disjointed. For a novella it took me a long time to read. I am fascinated by the premise and the origins of the work. Ultimately it did not work for me. 2 🌟

This was an interesting story but only had one real plot so it lacks complexity. Very fast read but not fulfilling.

This month I read a historian‘s grappling with the horrifying mass drowning of disabled Africans on the slave ship Le Rodeur, only to find this novella about the weight of remembering that history.

The Deep imagines the sea-dwelling descendants of enslaved people thrown overboard, exploring their choice to elect one ‘historian‘ to carry all the memories of their kind. Is being without history, especially one so devastating, a freedom or a loss?

#lmpbc round 11 #groupy

Do you fancy any of these? Have got plenty more to choose from if you don't! @Powered_By_Plants @Mrs_B @veritysalter

Will tag the others in comments.

A mythical, creative novella on generational trauma and the toll it takes, both on an individual and on a community. The themes are powerfully honed and I‘ll be reflecting on this book for a while. I do think the writing style could have been refined a bit—parts of it were highly repetitive—but that‘s a personal preference.

4.5⭐️ I don‘t know how to sum up my feelings for this book adequately except to say that it is a heavy, thought provoking look at the importance of history and belonging. Carrying the weight of a painful history and the struggle to not lose your identity in that pain but to share and use it to push forward. This short book captured my attention with the premise of mermaids but kept me reading with its message

3.5-4 🌟 very interesting concept: the water-breathing descendants of pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard into the sea, survived, and created a utopian society. The idea came from Daveed Diggs/ Clipping Song “The Deep”. It was very different than the usual Fantasy I have read, but I enjoyed it.

The writing style is hard to follow with prose that feels like it's meant to distract more than to tell a story. It actually sort of felt like it was half story and half poetry; and it switched between the two often...and my attention along with it. I was totally there for the story and for Yetu...but poetry and/or poetic prose has never really been my thing.

Ehhhh...I had the same issue with this book as I did with her novel “An Unkindness of Ghosts,” which is basically that the concept is incredible, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The Deep was oddly structured and confusing at times. IMHO this would have worked better as either a short story, which would have forced more clarity, or a full-length novel, which would have allowed ideas to bloom. This length was just...awkward.

Yetu is the young historian of the wajinru, sole carrier of her people‘s painful memories, but she escapes her home in the deep and cautiously forges a relationship with a human, Oori.

Read October 15-18
Rated 2.5/5 ⭐️
Book 42/60

I don't normally read fantasy or sci fi so i really cant rate it. I loved the beautiful writing but thought the plot kind of boring

This was a phenomenal, intense story. The mothers of women thrown overborad during the Middle Passage, the slave ship that transported hundreds of Africans to American shores. It's a story that asks one person to be the historian, to hold all.the memories and remembrance of a community, instead of sharing thoes memories amongst everyone. It is a powerful, short story.

@Clwojick 5pts #TeamSlaughter

There is only one week left in October! I am not ready for October to end. I can always read mysteries and horror throughout the rest of the year, but October is just an wonderful time of the year to read scary books.

On to Non Fiction and True Crime!

A fantasy story of " water- dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers". #Screamathon ? @4thhouseontheleft Book number 4.

A novella that follows two timelines, the historical one where pregnant African slave women are thrown overboard in the crossing along side the tale of the current historian. Yetu is chosen to be the oral historian/keeper of how their species evolved and the pain that comes with it. Best word to describe the story - haunting. 4.5🌟 but I think I need to reread it cause I know I missed things.

The Wajinru are the descendants of pregnant women thrown overboard slave ships. In order to protect the Wajinru from their painful and traumatic memories, a single historian carries these memories so the others may forget their history, except for once a year at the remembering.

Yetu is this generations historian. But she wants more than to be a vessel for the memories, more than just carrying the past.

16 points for #TeamHarkness

#ThoughtfulThursday thanks for the tag @Sace :)

1) The leaves do change, though they haven‘t gotten very colourful so far. Bit late this year!

2) I just like comforting food as it gets colder. Pies and stews and soups 🥰

3) I have a great tbr planned this month (I think!) but the tagged book is the one I‘m most looking forward to :)

@MoonWitch94
Do you want to play @AsYouWish @AkashaVampie @jessinikkip

Yet another gem I wouldn't have known about if not for Listy! I knew I had to read this as soon as I checked out clipping's song and fell in love. It's beautifully written and Daveed Diggs' reading is SO GOOD! Just like Kindred, I cannot recommend this enough.
#readblackauthors

Inventive and haunting. I would have loved to be able to dig into this in a feminist lit class. **I say feminist lit because I think it‘s doing some things structurally that I would like to explore through that lens but regular lit would be fine too

I really liked this book. It's a fascinating exploration of memory and collective trauma, and Rivers Solomon writes compelling characters like no one else I've ever read.

I read it on kindle, but I want to go back and read the audiobook at some point. Daveed Diggs reads it and I'm told it's really well done.

"One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities."

Really beautiful writing and imagery, and so imaginative, you can really feel what it must be like to be one of these mermaid-like underwater people (the wajinru).
More than that it's about carrying the weight of a long and painful history.
Small book but packs a huge punch.

I was #audiostitching to this today which is my favorite thing to do these days. I loved Daveed Diggs' narration of this fascinating novella but I wish it was longer. It was engaging and thought provoking but the non-linear storyline was a little hard to keep track of at times. Definitely a pick but it left me wanting more.

Thanks for the tag @Philonist

1. Cat 100% 😸
2. Reading good books with good friends #buddyreads

#ThankfulThursdays @Cosmos_Moon

“We are a song and we are together. We remember.“ WOW this book is 384737824392/10. SO beautiful and wonderfully written, for such a small novella, it packs in such a rich story that it's almost exhausting (in like, a good way). As Daveed Diggs says, it mythologically re-framed one of the worst holocausts committed in human history. A metaphor for generational trauma and the importance, yet heaviness and tragedy of remembering a people's history.

The writing was beautiful, loved the concept. I think this would have been higher rated for me if I read the physical book or ebook. Unpopular opinion, I didn‘t enjoy the audio narration. Didn‘t vibe w me.

The concept behind this book is fascinating, disturbing, and deeply human. I had a mixed experience with the actual execution of the story, but I think the book and the clipping. song are worth checking out, because even if you find they aren't quite your cup of tea, they speak truths that are necessary to confront and reflect on. If you find that they are your cup of tea, that's even better. 💙