As we start the transition from summer to fall, book club is diving—literally—into historical fantasy.

Our September book is The Deep by Rivers Solomon!

Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group Clipping.

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.

The Deep is “a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gaze…a superb, multilayered work,” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.

Rivers Solomon is half woman, half boy, part beast, and a refugee of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Fae writes about feral creatures on the cusp. Born in the so-called United States, fae currently lives on an isle off the Eurasian continent.

Fat Forward Book Club will meet Friday, September 18 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT to discuss The Deep in the community Discord!

Meeting on the third Friday of every month at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT via Discord, Fat Forward Book Club will read and discuss a variety of books by fat authors, about fat experiences, and/or featuring fat characters based on votes from Bindery subscribers. We'll explore books across multiple genres and target audiences/age groups to discuss depictions of fatness in fiction and nonfiction, as well as how perceptions of fatness in the book world have changed or stayed the same in recent years.

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