Fluidity in History: Tara Roberts’ “Written in the Waters” https://ift.tt/C24x0Ab
Heartbreaking. Painful. Challenging. Humbling. Enlightening. Reading Written in the Waters by Tara Roberts was a profound emotional journey into the heaviness of the past and how history moves fluidly into the beauty and problems of the present.
Written in the Waters is a moving memoir by Roberts, a scuba diver who collaborated with National Geographic to literally dive into the history of the transatlantic slave trade in search of a way to belong within and embrace her history. After visiting a diving exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she learned of a predominantly Black scuba diving group called Diving With a Purpose (DWP) that searches for and explores wrecked slave ships underwater, Roberts remembered her childhood dreams of being an adventurer and a storyteller.
“Perhaps I could wield the pen as my sword. Perhaps I could tell stories that helped to save the land,” states Roberts. And so begins her journey from Northern Virginia to Cozumel, Mexico, Sri Lanka to Cape Town, South Africa, and beyond. Roberts crosses borders and boundaries, “diving deep this time,” descending into the actual and metaphorical waters to connect the past with the present and discover the sunken secrets that connect our troubled present to the harrowing, not-so-distant past.
The passage that best sums up the heart of Written in the Waters is an African proverb stated by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Roberts: “Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” Pointing to history often being told from the perspective of the victor, this adage highlights the significance of Roberts’ work with National Geographic; it is the telling of history from the marginalized voices who were silenced during their lifetimes and whose descendants often still go unheard.
While Roberts’ travels across the globe include the building of meaningful connections between other Black scuba divers, archaeologists, maritime archaeologists, college friends, and more, it is the stories and conversations of these individuals that push Roberts (and readers) to rethink and reflect on what it means to belong, the ways the slave trade impacted countries across the globe, and how these impacts still permeate today. Today, systemic racism and the attempts to erase diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts makes Roberts’ book and these stories paramount, as Written in the Waters is grounded in factual evidence surrounding the slave trade, how it shifted landscapes, cultures, and economies, while giving space for these facts and these stories to be told by the very community that should be telling them.
Seeing history through Roberts’ perspective sometimes left my throat tightened, with her use of language expressing the history of slavery making it impossible to look away. In one passage, Roberts shares the history of the Tree of Forgetfulness. “Captives were made to walk around the tree—seven times for women, nine times for men—to forget their identity, culture, history, and to become a blank canvas for their enslavers.” Roberts’ writing mixes facts with visuals, sentence structures cut apart in a way that mimics how a group of people were torn apart, small phrases divided to hit hard, longer phrases dragging with honest heaviness.
But Written in the Waters is more than the history of the slave trade or Roberts’ journey toward finding her place – it speaks to how the “hunted” are taking ownership of their history. It is an effort of “rehumanizing history” to better “understand our connection to the past, but also to each other.”
Ayana, one of the founders of the Society of Black Archaeologists, calls for a reframing of the history of slavery beyond “the haunting of those histories and those truths.”
“I think… that there is so much more to this history than pain and death. And I know that because the work that I do focuses on how people lived… not how they died. How even in the midst of great harm, pain, violence, rape, sexual exploitation, the people forged families together, built communities with each other, loved on their own bodies and the bodies of others… And that is beautiful,” Ayana explains.
It is through the work of Ayana, Adichie, the DWP, and countless others included in Roberts’ book and beyond, that the fluidity of history becomes apparent. Written in the Waters is a submersion into the depths and realities of the transatlantic slave trade, coupled with Roberts’ personal journey through history to understand her own sense of belonging in today’s world. Roberts and readers discover the relevancy of the past in making sense of today’s present, and how such history can guide us toward rehumanizing ourselves thanks to yemayá, the patron spirit of rivers and oceans — who called Roberts to share the very stories she has been holding for us.
NONFICTION Written in the Waters
By Tara Roberts
National Geographic
Published January 28, 2025
0 Commentaires