Written in the Waters
A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging
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- 299,00 kr
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One woman's epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean in this searing memoir for fans of Cheryl Strayed's Wildand Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped. An adventurous blend of personal and cultural history from a star National Geographic explorer and "a pioneer and an inspiration."—Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, LoveWhen Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Roberts considers the costs of the global slave trade and its impact on her own family in her engrossing debut. During a 2017 visit to Washington, D.C.'s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Roberts saw a photo of Black scuba divers exploring sunken slave ships. A placard identified the divers as members of the underwater archaeology collective Diving with a Purpose. Moved to join the group in searching "faraway lands right here on Earth" to "tell unknown and untold stories about one of the darkest moments of human history," Roberts accompanied the divers to shipwrecks off the coasts of South Africa and Costa Rica and slave auction sites in Benin and Togo. As she documents her travels, Roberts sharply reflects on how the transatlantic slave trade led to a "justification for systemic racism," and catalogs its reverberations within her family tree; in one memorable section, she visits North Carolina and learns that her formerly enslaved great-grandfather took possession of 174 acres of land there after the Civil War. Roberts matches a reporter's meticulousness with a memoirist's emotional attunement, delivering a sweeping survey of slavery's repercussions. It's a must-read.
