Solomon muses on what it means to try and be free of cultural and societal expectations, recognising that struggling against what is expected may be painful but being absent and disconnected can be so much worse. Through Yetu’s Rememberings, memories from all the wajinru past and present, we get to explore what the weight of a history means and how it lingers with those who are both so far from it and yet forever present in it. Though there is little or no light in the deep, the feeling of motion and sound is given new resonance and you see as Yetu does, feeling with her scales and fins, learning to hear what is happening in her watery home. Solomon tells this story beautifully and with an encompassing, engrossing visual palette. While everyone else lives blissfully unaware, she carries all the pain, torment and death within her, sharing it only once a year to remind her people of who they are, if only for a little while. She is the latest Historian and keeper of the true origins of the wajinru. One of their descendants, Yetu, has been chosen to hold all the memories of her people, the wajinru. The mermaid-like babies of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard have survived and created a new society in the water.
Rivers Solomon’s The Deep is a powerful narrative that takes the horrendous legacies of colonialism and racism and finds a fantastical twist that offers something new. Within the deep, dark ocean, vibrations and sound are physical and visual. An echo of a dream, the confronting effect of a scream or comfort in a breath.
0 kommentar(er)
