Research Log Entry 2

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The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Brief Synopsis

This novel focuses on a community of merpeople known as the Wajinro. The Wajinro are people born from the enslaved African-American women who were pregnant and cast overboard during the atlantic slave trade. The novel follows Yetu, who is the main protagonist of the novel, and also the historian for the Wajinro who keeps the memories of their origins alive in a yearly meeting known as The Rememberance. Yetu is overcome with feelings of pain and agony and does not know how much longer she can withstand holding the memories for her people.

Secondary Scholarly Sources . . .

"Crossing Merfolk, the Human, and the Anthropocene in Nalo Hopkinson’s The New Moon’s Arms and River Solomon’s The Deep"

Davis, Jalondra A.

This source focuses on two books, one being River Solomon's, The Deep. This source uses The Deep to argue how this novel challenges Western thinking, in regards to the perpetuated human-animal divide, and challenging epistemologies that disregard other ways of thinking in favor of western ideas.

“Salvaging Utopia: Lessons for (and from) the Left in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), The Deep (2019), and Sorrowland (2021)."

Megen de Bruin-Molé

This source takes a more political approach to the novel, The Deep, and argues how although The Deep may seem like a dystopia in the eyes of "liberalism and whiteness", it can be percieved as a utopia in connection to the "marginalized, history of leftist and black utopian thought" (Megen de Bruin-Molé).

“Kinship in the abyss: submerging with The Deep.”

DeLoughrey, Elizabeth

The author of this source takes a more holistic approach to their argument, and explores how The Deep "speaks directly" to the varying ontologies of oceanic origins, such as the one in The Deep concerning the merpeople, the Wajinro.

After researching secondary scholarly sources, listed above are a few of the unique arguments I have read in regards to River Solomon's The Deep. These sources gave me new perspectives and insights into the novel that I had not considered before.

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