My first February read was a smash! What it smashed was my previous beliefs about African American history. My reading on this topic has admittedly been limited. I know I read several books by Zora Neale Hurston, but they must have been read pre-Goodreads because I have no record of them. I had this problem with my last review which did not deal with a book by an African American. It had been some time ago since I read that author, Nicola Griffith. So I am again trying to excavate my memories.
When I did a search of my Goodreads books for "African American", I found that I had read King Peggy by Peggielene Bartels in 2012. This is the only book that came up since I've been recording my books on Goodreads. I am really sorry that I've read no other books about African Americans since I started recording my books on Goodreads before the book that is the subject of this review.
The book that I'm reviewing is the memoir Written in the Waters by Tara Roberts, and I obtained it from a public library. Tara Roberts is an African American explorer who decided to learn how to scuba dive in order to locate and document wrecks of ships that had gone down carrying kidnapped Africans brought to the Americas to become slaves. Roberts needed courage and tenacity to follow through on such a commitment. I have a great deal of respect for her. She now works for The National Geographic Society. If you want to know more about Tara Roberts than I provide in this review, go to her website .
The Yoruban Goddess Yemaya dances in Tara Roberts' imagination. She wonders if Yemaya is her "patron saint". Since she is a diver, I would think that Yemaya definitely is her Goddess. She needed to do thirty dives to prepare for training. Roberts thought of herself as "an intrepid explorer". I agree with this self-concept. Roberts felt that diving is "a holy communion with Yemaya".
Artifacts that are found underwater need to be drawn where they were found. They also have to be measured with precision using rulers, pencils and mylar paper which can be used underwater. Once the object and its location have been fully recorded, the artifacts can be moved for conservation, additional analysis or display.
Ayana, another Black diver mentioned in Written in the Waters, pointed out that only 1% of archaeologists are Black, and that less than twenty of a possible one thousand slave vessel shipwrecks have been found and documented. This is because Black history hasn't been considered a priority. Yet most of the planet is covered with water, so Black history beneath the sea needs to be more of a priority.
Rebellions and suicides occurred on many of the slave ships that shipwrecked. I would think that they may have caused the shipwrecks.
Captives intended for slavery were made to walk around a tree called the Tree of Forgetfulness--seven times for women and nine times for men in order to forget their identity, culture and history. A King of Dahomey began this practice. The original tree from the 17th century wasn't there, but there was a newer baby tree. I would think that the baby tree would have less power and might even be ineffective.
Author Tara Roberts thinks that her Africa is in the U.S. I wonder if she means adapting elements of African culture and religion to living in an American context. It could also be that she might feel more at home in the African descended communities in Puerto Rico or Brazil.
This author lists water deities from African Diasporic Religion. They are Yemaya, Oshun, Olokun, Mami Wata and Abena. I knew about all of them except Abena. So I looked her up and found that Abena Motianim was on the list of knowledge deities. Then I found information on YouTube which indicated that Abena is a personification of the nation of Ghana.
Tara Roberts didn't go to Ghana nor did she list it as a potential destination. She was invited to Costa Rica in Central America to document a slave ship, but she wanted to go to the Afro-Punk Festival in Johannesburg which is in South Africa. Roberts is aware that White South Africans based apartheid on Jim Crow. I discovered online that Jim Crow originally referred to a song called "Jump Jim Crow", but it became a pejorative term for African Americans. It later meant segregation laws.
I was actually very impressed with Written in the Waters. I graded it A+ which would be five stars on Goodreads. The large time investment I put into reading and taking notes on this book was very worthwhile.
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