(no subject)

[skygiants]

I read Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts twice in the past couple years, once for myself and then again for a book group, and despite my best intentions didn't end up untangling my complicated thoughts about it enough to write it up either of those times.

Anyway, a month or two ago I read Solomon's novella The Deep and appreciated it in a much less complicated fashion. This is the one that's based on/in collaboration/conversation with clipping.'s song Afrofuturist The Deep, which posits a thriving society of mer-people descended from enslaved people thrown overboard during the Atlantic crossing.

Solomon's take posits an underwater society in which the burden of cultural memory is carried by one wajinru (mer-person) per generation, a la The Giver, who takes their community through an annual collective ritual of remembrance before taking all the memories back up into themselves again. Unfortunately, this generation's historian, Yetu, is slowly collapsing under the mental stress, so when the memory-ritual comes around this time she flees before the memories can come back to her, leaving the rest of her community to figure out how to cope with thousands of years' worth of traumatic memory on their own. Or not!

Over the course of the next few days, Yetu rediscovers (post-apocalyptic?) land society, meets some two-legged humans, and develops a crush, while attempting to resolve the central questions of how a community processes its trauma, and how much of themselves a person owes to that community and that past, and at what personal cost. These are all compelling questions, and both Yetu's journey of self-discovery and romance and the interstitial adventures of one of the first wajinru carry the plot along in a way that provides enough movement and light to balance the weight of the themes. The one section that didn't quite work for me is a bit in the middle from another wajinru POV that might have been a trauma-memory or an actual event occurring over the course of the book or an explanation of what caused the apocalypse; I would like to have been a little clearer on that point, but the confusion might well be a me and a reading on lunch break problem. Anyway, a strong entry into the sci-fi subgenre of postcolonial underwater fish person societies!

Conceptually, it's also just a really cool piece of transformative work; the book feels quite different than the song, I think, and it's neat to read the discussion at the end of the way the collaboration worked.

Comments

[genarti]

Oh interesting! I've been intrigued by this book -- I'm always interested in mer-people done well, and this premise is so good.

But also, as you know, I found An Unkindness of Ghosts well-written but flawed but BRUTAL (as it was meant to be!) and have been wondering just how much I'll need to brace myself similarly for The Deep. But I'll still almost certainly read it sooner or later.

[hebethen]

Personally I found it still fairly brutal but buffered to some extent by the framing somehow. I'm afraid it's been long enough I can't really tease out the whys and wherefores, though, and ofc different readers may react differently.

[skygiants]

To me, it was grim in places but didn't have the occasional casual sucker-punches of Unkindness of Ghosts -- the darkest thing for me I think was Yetu leaving her people to experience their memories alone to begin with, and the fact that that was resolved in a way that allowed for forward movement for everyone impacts my overall impression pretty strongly.

[skygiants]

It didn't seem to me nearly as brutal as An Unkindness of Ghosts, but perhaps that's also because my expectations were set by Unkindness of Ghosts such that I was more braced for it? Anyway, I have it on my kobo if you ever want to borrow!

[boxofdelights]

Does Yetu develop a crush on a two-legged? Is this story also in conversation with The Little Mermaid?

[skygiants]

Absolutely yes, though the crush comes after Yetu has already decided to leave her people rather than being a driving force for the departure.

[sovay]

Anyway, a strong entry into the sci-fi subgenre of postcolonial underwater fish person societies!

. . . How many have I been missing?

[obopolsk]

This is my question as well!

[skygiants]

Last time I read one of these (Joan Slonczewski's Door Into Ocean) chestnut_pod and I determined there were enough to create a whole Goodreads bookshelf!

[skygiants]

I personally have read at least four: this one, Joan Slonczewski's Door Into Ocean, and Sheri Tepper's The Waters Rising and Fish Tails, which are not good books about the development of postcolonial fish person societies but nonetheless do fit the brief. And chestnut_pod not only added Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl to the list but created the Goodreads bookshelf!

[sovay]

And chestnut_pod not only added Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl to the list but created the Goodreads bookshelf!

I should definitely read a book titled Salt Fish Girl.

[ceitfianna]

I really enjoyed this book, really pulled me with evocative writing and a fascinating premise.

[skygiants]

The premise is so cool and it's so neat to see its evolution from the song to the book!

[chestnut_pod]

Anyway, a strong entry into the sci-fi subgenre of postcolonial underwater fish person societies! -- Would that there were even more! I also accept amphibian societies.

Re: what caused the apocalypse, I think it hangs a little too much on having heard the song and porting it over, even though the worlds seem quite different in some ways. Was it just climate change, or was it climate change and then Merpocalypse?

[skygiants]

Right, like, if I had to pin it down, I would say probably the Merpocalypse, but it's deeply confusing that no one in mer-society other than that one character seems to be aware that it happened. One would think Yetu would mention it!

[merit]

An Unkindness of Ghosts was... a lot. Someone has to be in the right headspace for it.

I probably enjoyed the concept of The Deep more (however, I also generally like fantasy more than sci-fi even if Solomon does play with genres here) but certainly parts did seem tonally different. Yetu's story could have been the novella tbh

[skygiants]

I think what I keep coming down to about Unkindness of Ghosts is that it's a book written out of righteous anger, and while some bits of how that anger manifests didn't work for me as a reading experience it isn't my anger and so who am I to say what works about it and what doesn't?

[asakiyume]

Three cheers for postcolonial underwater fish person societies!

[skygiants]

May the virtual shelf of this sub-sub-subgenre only grow!