What do we do with the trauma that we’ve inherited? So it is no surprise to us when, during an annual ceremony where the wajinru gather in order to receive the memories of their past for a brief time, time enough to satisfy a deep thirst for their own history, that Yetu, free from remembering, runs away. Yetu however, has a fragile constitution, and so this task, this weight she carries that has stripped her of any individual identity, is killing her. To be a Historian means experiencing every single memory as if it was your own. A responsibility that falls on Yetu, our delicate and long-suffering main character. In order to thrive despite the suffering, it was decided long ago that one of their people a Historian should carry the burden of their history and collected memory. For good reason they are a people descended from the pregnant African women who were thrown overboard during the slave trade, their unborn babies granted new aquatic life by the ocean. On its surface, though, it is about the wajinru, a mermaid-like people who have great power over the ocean but little memory. Which is the sort of fascinating thing you learn when you read the acknowledgements.
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