Lina Rau

Dr. Pressman

ECL 305

Final Essay

9 May 2024

The Ocean as an Archive in The Water Will Carry Us Home and The Deep

The Middle Passage is part of one of the most brutal chapters in human history and is marked by the transatlantic slave trade, which resulted in the forced migration of millions of Africans to the Americas. In Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film The Water Will Carry Us Home (2018) and Rivers Solomon’s novel The Deep (2019), the ocean emerges as a medium through which the ancestral memories of the Middle Passage are explored and remembered. In both narratives, African pregnant women are thrown overboard and undergo a transformation into mermaid-like creatures. The ocean is in both narratives the place that at the end saves the souls of those thrown overboard, which suggests that the ocean is a place that collects the ancestral memories of the people that have endured the Middle Passage. Now that the ocean holds these memories in the form of preserving the lives of those thrown overboard into mermaids, it has become an archive which contains knowledge. The reimagination of the ocean as an archive serves as a mechanism for the preservation of cultural memory.

In Rivers Solomon’s novel, the role of the ocean as an archive is vividly portrayed through the experiences of Yetu, who is the historian of the wajinru. Her interaction with the oceanic archive bring forth the traumatic experiences of her ancestors: “The rememberings carried her mind away from the ocean to the past. These days, she was more there than here […]. Yetu was becoming an ancestor herself. Like them, she was dead, or very near it” (Solomon 2019, p.9). What is seen here, is that the ocean has a transformative force that lets Yetu merge between the present and past, until she “was becoming an ancestor herself” (p.9). The passage above, which is found at the very beginning of the novel, highlights the heaviness of the historical trauma that is stored deep in the ocean, as Yetu was like the ancestors “dead, or very near it” (p.9). Additionally, the role of being the historian must be a burdensome one, as Yetu finds herself more in the past than in the present. She carries the weight of the wajinru’s collective memory on her shoulders, suggesting that her role is not only to remember, but also to embody the history herself and to survive, “Remember now or you perish. Without your history, you are empty!” (p. 25).

By embodying the history and carrying the weight on her shoulders, more interestingly, it seems that Yetu is actively manifesting the concept of being an archive through her role as the historian by herself: “[Yetu’s] body was full of other bodies. Every wajinru who had ever lived possessed her in this moment” (p.22). She is given a sense of responsibility as her body is “full of other bodies”, which signifies that she is an archive that holds knowledge herself.

Her being an archive could nevertheless never work without looking at the ocean’s importance in that matter. As a historian, Yetu dives into the ocean’s depths to retrieve as many memories during the yearly painful remembrances as possible, “Despite the waves of pain rocking her into a catatonic trance, she continued. Images, stories, songs, feelings, smells, hungers, longings, tears – memories – left her mind” (p. 29). Despite of it being so painful, she nevertheless continues to look for more stories in the ocean. Concluding from that, the ocean is like a vast storage depot that provides all the knowledge that is needed for Yetu to continue her job – and from which can be learned. Considering that, Yetu and the ocean engage collaboratively with each other. Taking that into account, the ocean must be seen as the bigger archive providing every History and information needed, whereas Yetu has the vital role of being the ocean’s transmitter. Through Yetu, the ocean and its archive are given an active voice, through which the memories are remembered and put into words. Through Yetu, the transmission the oceanic archive’s knowledge to multiple generations if facilitated.

Moreover, the whole act of remembering every year must be seen under the premise of not forgetting what happened in past. It is the ocean that provides access to the supposedly forgotten stories. Whenever Yetu gets a flashback of a story, just like that one: “Yetu thought she remembered something about another young woman whose family was wiped out in an instant by disease […]” (p. 74), the reader has to remind oneself that the ocean has witnessed all of that trauma even before a historian could catch up on it.

A big significance must also be put onto the wajinru’s origins. Yetu explains:“Our mothers were pregnant two-legs thrown overboard while crossing the ocean on slave ships. We were born breathing water as we did in the womb. We built our home on the seafloor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers” (p. 22). Even though the passage confronts the horror of African pregnant women thrown overboard on slave ships, the ocean is not devalued as a site of trauma, but rather seen as a womb: “We were born breathing water as we did in the womb” (p. 22). The ocean is thus becoming a life-giving entity, where new identities can emerge and where the ones thrown overboard can continue to live as mermaids. Concluding from that, the ocean is not a passive force that just preserves the horrific past, it can also lead to the creation of new beings.

One important point that goes hand in hand with the above-stated is the ocean’s function of being the wajinru’s first caretaker ever: “When the History threatened to end Yetu, she went to one memory in particular: their first caretaker. In this remembering, there is a lone wajinru pup floating, alive and content. It was the ocean who was their first amaba” (p. 100). By saying that it was the ocean who first took care of them, it gets personified. That personification underlines the fact, that the ocean is not just a passive environment or the habitat where the wajinru live in. By protecting the first innocecent wajinrus (which make them be seen like little babies), emphasis on the ocean shaping the wajinru’s identity is put on. It was and becomes a special witness of time that has collected all the memories and traumas from the past to successfully establish new lives.

Lastly, the ocean does not only passively absorb all of the memories and voices from the ones thrown overboard, but also actively provides physical evidence and artifacts on the History. In the novel, Yetu talks about one specific memory that still has an impact on her: “In one of the rememberings, there was still hair caught in a comb belonging to the foremother” (p.20). Yetu has not only found a comb that belongs to humans deep in the ocean, but she has also found a comb which still has hair in it. The hair is a physical reminder, more even a symbol, of a past life that is preserved in the ocean. Even though the physical body might be decayed in the water, the hair of the person can still be detected in the middle of the ocean: it is the evidence of a person that has once lived and that has had a whole personality. The ocean is thus not only functioning as an archive when it comes to the wajinru’s memories, deep inside of it, one can also find physical objects of those memories and DNA – the Ocean is a living archive.

All of these examples from the Deep show that the ocean is indeed a living archive through which the cultural memory is preserved. It contains not only physical evidence in its archive, but also the deeply traumatizing memories that Yetu vocalizes and expresses through her work. Both Yetu and the Ocean (Yetu seen as the big archive’s transmitter), are important to preserve the history so that it never gets forgotten. These narratives deeply align with the depiction of the ocean being an archive in Tesfaye’s film:

The film starts with a compelling quote of the Water Spirit Omambala: “The Water Spirit Omambala brought us here. The Water Spirit Omambala will carry us home” (1:23 min.). Omambala thus emerges as a liminal figure that encapsulates both suffering and salvation. The Water Spirit’s ability to bring people back home, make it seen as if it has a dual role in the complex relationship that African cultures had with the ocean- it is a relationship that is presumedly based on the historical events of the Middle Passage and storytelling. Concluding from that, Omambala acts a guide and something that can be looked up to across the ocean, which suggests that the ocean is in fact a living archive that holds cultural knowledge.

Furthermore, the film opens with a symbolic scene where a human character engages in a ritual ceremony that is marked by colorful and bright painted art and painted skin, including painted hands (cf. 0:00 – 1:17 min). That segment is essential, as it vividly illustrates the cultural richness of African traditions, which is from big significance in the next part of the video. In the latter, the viewers are faced with an artistic paper world that is painted with watercolors, in which a man opens the lock of a door with a key he has in his hands (cf. 1:26 – 2:15 min). The image of unlocking a door stands as a metaphor of the often concealed or ignored African traditions, that are deliberately “locked” away by Westerners who do not want to face the brutal history of the Middle Passage. By visually unlocking these histories, the forgotten traditions are put stress on again and they are given importance. It is about these traditions, that are saved in the ocean’s archive and must never be forgotten.

Another recurring figure is the eye that is painted onto the hands of the woman in the beginning of the video and the artistic character of the man (cf. 1:13, 1:30 min). The eye, often regarded as omniscient, symbolizes deep knowledge about the history and culture being recounted. Concluding from that notion, there might be additional, untold stories existing in the deep that are not being recounted yet. The eye therefore represents a capacity to see literally beyond the surface of what is being presented as “truthful” or “meaningful”. If in that video only a singular history is documented, one can pick-and-choose which history is being told and which in particular is not. This pick-and-choose mentality has, one can assume, a severe impact on what archives are being built. It is thus an active decision on what to erase in the history and what to put out in order to build an archive. The archive that existed prior to this video has therefore erased the history and stories of the people that are presented now. The stories and traditions that are still hidden in the archive of the ocean, are now finally acknowledged and seen through the metaphor of the eye.

Another significant scene that underlines the point of the ocean being an archive is the scene, in which African pregnant women are thrown overboard and are turned into mermaids by the Water Spirit (cf. 3:37-5:06). The transformation above symbolizes the African women’s new existence that goes beyond mortality. As mermaids (which they now are), the women are not bound by the limitations of human life anymore and possess immortal qualities. That they now have immortal qualities is shown at 4:29, when the Water Spirit Omambala is nurturing the ones thrown overboard by fishes. The newly-transformed mermaids still have human-like features like dark hair and traditional jewelry (cf. 04:38 min). The mermaids now live deep in the ocean which is suggested by water background in the video (cf. 4:50). The scene above links to the ocean being an archive in the sense, that the mermaids’ new habitat is no longer earth, but the ocean. In their new existence, they are no longer victims of the Middle Passage, but have a new and vibrant form of presence. The voices, stories, traditions and identities of those thrown overboard are now preserved in the ocean, even though their stories might be forgotten on land. Their new existence makes them be an important member of the ocean which legacy continues. Even the portrayal of the two mermaids finding together to create new family (4:52 min), creates the sense of having an ability to have a second life under water which allows them to influence the present. The mermaids’ memories are and will always be preserved in the ocean’s depth.

Those mermaids also have the feature of the omniscient eye which is being talked about above (cf. 4:39 min). The omniscient eye on the mermaids, the man and the human in the beginning of the video, combines all words depicted in the video, meaningly the life above the water of the ones who survived slavery and the mermaids under water. All figures remember the culture’s richness; they are all closely connected to one another. The eye could therefore, apart from the analysis above, be an acknowledgement of the hidden archive in the ocean that is portrayed by the mermaid’s life under water.

As seen in both texts, the ocean does not only serve as the natural setting of both narratives, but also is an archival entity. Both stories engage with the ocean as being an archive through mermaid-like creatures that live deep down in the ocean after the traumatizing experiences on the slave ships. In The Deep, a special focus is put onto Yetu’s role as the historian, who is forced to endure those painful memories in order to save the whole wajinru community. Compared to that, in The Water Will Carry Us Home, a huge significance is put onto the Water Spirit that transforms the humans into mermaids. Nevertheless, in both texts, the ocean provides memories and voices, so that the culture is preserved.

Works Cited:

Solomon, R. (2019). The Deep.

Tesfaye, G. (2018). The Water Will Carry Us Home.