Title: The Deep
Description: Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.
Subjects: Science fiction, Fiction, LGBTQ science fiction & fantasy, Lambda Literary Awards, Lambda Literary Award Winner, American literature, Mermaids, Slavery, Africans, Collective memory, Historians, Mermaids and mermen, Memory, Identity (Psychology), collection:otherwise_tiptree_award=honor, Fiction, fantasy, general