The Deep

by Rivers Solomon

Rivers has given us Yetu, and in so doing, shown us something that our song elided: the immediate and visceral pain inherent in passing down past trauma. Drexciya’s militant uprising, which we suggested was incited by climate change and the destruction of Earth’s oceans, becomes an ambivalent act of both justice and extreme violence, perpetuating further trauma. In their translation from Drexciya to clipping. to this book, Rivers has added a dimension of pain to all three texts. Yetu’s painful remembering might be seen as an allegory for the painful process of adaptation that Rivers has accomplished by retelling a fictional, but nonetheless consequential, story of white supremacist violence. It’s a retelling that reaches back to the materials it adapts, and complicates them; makes them better. In this sense, Rivers has coauthored our song in as profound a way as we have inspired this book.