Tag Archives: Week 14

Week 14: The Deep

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These chapters of The Deep made me feel a sense of sympathy for Yetu as she was experiencing an internal struggle between picking herself or others. She is torn between her duty to her community and her own need for self-preservation. Without her identity as a historian, who was she? When she first experiences life without the burden of memories, she finds herself capable of making a deeper connection with someone else. She experiences emotions, connections, and conversations that were previously out of reach for her.

The passage that ends chapter 7 is what really stuck with me. It reads, “At least with pain there was life, a chance at change and redemption. The remembering might still kill her but the wajinru would go on, and so, too, would the rest of the world. The turbulent waves were a chaos of her own making and it was time to face them (126).” Despite the pain Yetu endures as a result of the History, it affirms that these experiences are a vital part of her existence. She realizes that this pain is a testament to her growth and the ability to persevere in the face of adversity. She carries the immense burden of her peoples’ memories and is forced to experience the trauma and pain first hand. She is burdened by the weight of their memories and chose her mental and emotional well-being as she couldn’t continue to sacrifice herself for them. But, she ultimately realizes that she needs to help her people in order to save them. Even though she knows this will cause her pain that may even kill her, she is willing to put others first. She realizes that her role as the historian is not just a burden but also a vital aspect of her identity and purpose. Her people rely on her to preserve the History and their culture and that abandoning them would be leading to far-reaching consequences. She acknowledges that this chaos is in part of her decisions and is willing to face the internal and external struggles that await. She is ready to confront the painful memories she has been suppressing and embrace the responsibility she has as Historian. Although this is her “job,” I still find myself feeling bad for her as she did not choose to have this life. It seems unfair that she doesn’t get to experience much happiness in life unless she is away from her community where she doesn’t have to constantly relive trauma.

Week 14: The Ocean as Mother

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There’s something so profound about how the themes of creation and motherhood work within Rivers Solomon’s The Deep. We can see how important motherhood is held through the creation of the womb that protects the wajinru from being preyed on while remembering, the relationship between Yetu and her amaba, and the wanjiru’s origins as the babies of pregnant African women who were thrown overboard during the Atlantic slave trade. Most importantly, we can see it in how the ocean is portrayed as an entity that first taught the wajinru to breathe underwater.

In the last chapter of The Deep, Yetu tells her amaba that she is trying to remember what it was like to be in the womb that carried the very first wajinru, to have a two-legged mother, and to be born to breathe air instead of water. Amaba then tells Yetu that there is little to no difference between the waters of the womb and the ocean water that surrounds them all. In a way, they are all still in the womb, always in a state of growth, change, and potential. They were carried in water and born into water. “It is all waters.” (149)

The centering of motherhood and creation in The Deep centers the stories and experiences of women through the reframing of the ocean as the creator and holder of all life on land and in the sea, more than a womb and more than a home. The ocean serves as a protector for those who seek refuge in its depths and as a teacher for those who are willing to learn. The story allows its female characters–and the ocean itself–to define themselves as more than just mothers or warriors, but as explorers, teachers, and historians as well.

Week 14 – Yetu’s journey

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While this entire section of “The Deep” by Rivers Solomon was interesting, I was especially interested in reading about Yetu’s initial escape in chapter 5, and her relationship to the Wajinru through her pain. What interested me the most about the initial escape from the Wajinru was how the journey she went through after the Remembrance could be an anecdote to the pain and suffering that people have experienced as a result of slavery and the slave trade. Yetu’s body gives out while trying to escape but her will keeps her pushing through. She goes days without eating and has horrible migraines and pain in her limbs. Historically, there have been forms of systemic racism that have been implemented to prevent people of color from achieving what white people have been able to achieve throughout the generations post-slavery. This has been proven true even in recent decades. I believe that her experience was a big focus because it alludes to what people of color have gone through due to the History. I also liked the idea of being a unified group of people because of the history. While Yetu is suffering, she has a “deep, restful sleep. There were no nightmares, Remeberings didn’t haunt her… She wasn’t quite sure who [Yetu] was, but she didn’t mind the unknowing because it came with such calm… (70). I thought this was an interesting sentence because it shows that the history serves to not bring pain, but create a relationship of unity with her people. There was calamity and comfort in her pain, and although she left her tribe, she subconsciously knew they felt the same way. She feels a sense of “freedom” (70) from her pain. I believe that this is one of the main points of the entire novel. History is a painful subject that needs to be embraced in order to have a sense of unity, as horrible as it may be sometimes.

Week 14: Nature Doesn’t Need Validation.

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Sorry for the short post, everyone. It’s been a very difficult weekend, so my creative juices aren’t flowing as freely.

This remark encapsulates an important aspect of Wajinru living. The whale, which represents nature’s protective and caring features, cares for the Wajinru and even feeds their smallest members. Our need to assign specific meanings and purposes to everything contrasts dramatically with nature’s intrinsic ability to exist in harmony and serve its surroundings.

People frequently seek meaning and purpose via their actions and lives. Everything, to humans, has a certain function. We provide little to no wiggle space for these specified reasons to change, and we are terrible at admitting when something does not contribute to society in the way we EXPECT. As we strive to understand our place in the world, we assign events, objects, and relationships significance. Nature, however, functions in a different way. Without making a conscious effort to define its function, each component of the ecosystem operates in tandem. This natural hierarchy is best demonstrated by the whale in the quotation, which provides care and nourishment without needing to justify its actions or seek acceptance from others.

Entering Chapter 3 of “The Deep,” readers are prompted to consider the complexities of human perception and our proclivity to provide meaning where it is not required. We are urged to contemplate the natural world’s intrinsic equilibrium of cohabitation, as well as the balance of seeking meaning through the lens of the Wajinru’s story and their relationship with the whale.

Sorry, again, for the brevity. I’ll see you all in class.

Week 14: Individual Identity vs The Culture/History of a People

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For this weeks’ blog I want to zone in on the big debate I found to be posed in chapter 5: Does history and culture give significance to the human existence or does our own personalities and experiences do that? I feel like throughout the chapter Yetu was sort of going back in fourth between wanting to be apart of the culture and history of her people saying how “she missed being a part of not just the sea, but the whole world. Without the History, she felt out of place and out of time. She missed being connected to it all.” (Page 82) These are feelings are arising after she, herself, decided to abandon her people and let them remember the history of their past all by themselves, knowing it would bring them suffering and maybe forgetting it all together, as they were innately compelled to do. On the opposite side of that very same coin though, she understood that with “connection came responsibility. Duty choked independence and freedom.” These two differing views give me the impression that there is a fine line in honoring culture and giving up your own identity to follow a lifestyle that was made by a people at a time you didn’t exist to now exist in a time that they don’t.

One may ponder the idea of why should we remember our culture at all? Why dont we make our own new experiences as we go along? I think the answer to that perplexing question is that the feeling of belonging to something bigger than ourselves feeds our insatiable hunger to feel special; like we have a purpose and importance in this big world. I feel it’s important to find a balance between what came before you and what is presented now. Times are ever changing, therefore adjusting traditions in order to keep them from being fully rejected by the people it no longer serves can not only cultivate an environment that does not infringe upon personal expressions and freedoms, but also preserves that sense of belonging to a bigger purpose and therefore satisfying our inherently primal instinct for connection all in one fell swoop.

Week 14 The Deep

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The text that really caught my attention in this week’s reading is on page 84. “They organized the world as two sides of a war, the two-legs in conflict with everything else. The way Suka talked about farming, it was as if they ruled the land and what it produced, as opposed to… existing alongside it” (Solomon 84) It’s a great passage about the human condition delivered through the point of view of Yetu. Throughout the semester we have been discussing the relationship between us and our natural environment. We see that the attitudes have certainly changed over time but for many societies they have truly seen it as something separate from us. i like that the passage also describes human history as one that is constantly at war. That is certainly how history is commonly taught to us. We can orient ourselves within a point of time based on the wars that were being fought and of course, the way that history is taught is commonly taught through the perspective of the conqueror of these wars. We then treat our relationship with the environment as if waging a war against it for our own means of profit. It is something we come in contact with only under our terms. Through these mermaids the book has shown us what living alongside our environment, as a part of it, might look like. I like that later on Yetu comments on her dislike of how the rain breaks water apart, she is so used to it operating as 1 whole body. The Wajinru are simply one more organism forming a part of this one body of water. This again reinforces the ideas of unity that are so prevalent in her community that most of the westernized world does not possess.

Week 14: Ch. 5

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Chapter 5 really touched me because it showed me how prevalent this book is today. We live in a world with so much going on— wars, ethnic cleansings/genocides, sex trafficking etc etc, and a lot of these things, historical or present, or concealed. History is erased; these experiences are not acknowledged or recognized as significant enough to be more important than certain political agendas, and it is so sad.
Yetu assumes a heavy responsibility. I feel that this is a type of responsibility that many people who have experienced devastating events such as war go through due to attempting preserve history, memories, culture etc. Our identity, or at least what we know of it, is ultimately defined by such devastation and the responsibility of preserving it. I think Yetu wanted to break free from that responsibility and wanted to see herself as Yetu and not just a keeper of memories.

Blog Post Week 14 — Chapter 5

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This week I was drawn to chapter 5 of The Deep. I think it was interesting seeing Yetu’s interaction with humans, or as she calls them, “two-legs”. I found it intriguing the way that Yetu described the humans, however considering that she is an aquatic being, it makes sense that it is an ocean-centric vision. She described their hair as “large chunks of coral” (Soloman, 71). I believe this is important to note because it fully shifts the perspective of the reader outside of their human, terracentric perspectives of the world. The next part that stood out to me was the part about a war between the wajinru and humans. The book states, “Water erupted from the sea and flowed onto the surface. A war? The ocean war? The wave war?” (Solomon, 72) I believe it alluded to a huge tsunami, but claimed that it was intentionally caused by the wajinru as an act of sabotage. I’d be curious to know more about what sparked the war between them; could it be a sustainability related topic, like pollution or overfishing? Nonetheless, I am curious and hope we find out later in the story. 

The next part that stood out to me was when Yetu thinks, “Everything would be all right now that she was free” (75, Solomon). I think this is almost funny because it sounds like a foreshadowing of the trouble on the horizon. I can’t necessarily relate to being physically freed from somewhere, but whenever I think something like that or that everything will be alright, it is usually the start of utter chaos for me. I feel like it’s one of those things you don’t say as to not jynx it, but who knows we will find out as the story unfolds. Kinda going back to the first part I mentioned her describing people in terms of the ocean is that she too views the ocean differently from above. The book states, “the vastness of the ocean looked so different from above, so much less comprehensible. […] Cut off from them, she had trouble making sense of who or what she was” (Solomon, 76). It literally goes as far as saying that her separation from the ocean has flipped her identity, which we also see her get into at the end of the chapter with her expression of what she feels her role as historian was. Another point is that she can recognize that from above the ocean can seem disinviting, and that her perspective from below looking up is an entirely different relationship with the water that most humans might have. 

Week 14: The Deep

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In this week’s reading I thought something important that was presented was the concept of self identity. I couldn’t help notice the times in which Yetu felt as if she didn’t know who she was anymore, or if that she was anyone for that matter. It was intriguing to read and make a mental image of Yetu evolving as we first read her with the importance of being a historian to the wajinru people and sacrificing herself for others as that is all she has ever known since the age of 14, to finally escaping that life and going through the process of finding her own identity away from the influence of others like her Amaba. Although Yetu had escaped she still had no real sense of where she felt she belonged as being in the deep meant death for her return or staying on land away from her people, “She didn’t know where she belonged, if returning to the wajinru would mean the death of her. But she wasn’t suited for like here” (page 112). In the eyes of Yetu both situations were a lose-lose, she would either loose her people or her life which is something she did intentionally ask for. Reading about this identity development felt almost as if Yetu was about to start approaching the developmental cycle that was never got to fully experience as she was just thrown into this role of historian at such a young age that now that she left her people she was able to think and decide for herself.

I also enjoyed the entirety of chapter 7 as you can see the development of Yetu and Oori’s relationship. Oori is almost like Yetu’s other half, the half that challenges her, makes her question her decisions, to truly seeing things from a different lens, but ultimately push her to make decisions for herself selfishly. It was also interesting to read that there was a lust going on between the two as they were from different worlds and different beings, but still focused on who they were as beings instead of the outliers. I think this idea also goes back to early class discussions of what differentiates a creature and human, what is the border between the two? It was clear that Yetu was not a two-leg being but she was not also fully an animal, she was still able to feel different emotions, have a more advanced thinking, and even develop a relationship with other two-leg beings but still had physical features of an animals such as gills and rows of sharp teeth. This was a thought I kept through what I’ve read so far and just makes me wonder more about life outside of humanity but also the borders that classify what is human and non.