In chapter 5 of The Deep by Rivers Solomon, the text explores the complicated relationship between identity and history as Yetu struggles to find herself and create a personal identity apart from being the historian and an archive of the struggles the ancestors of the Wajinuru had faced. The fight for identity and autonomy becomes an important part of the narrative because it helps serve as a form of resistance by not letting the trauma and collective history of the slave trade be the single element that defines who Yetu is as an individual.

While stuck in a small pool onshore, Yetu explains to her new friend Oori that it might not be a bad thing if one is not consumed by history because “Before, [she] was no one. When you’re everyone in the past, and when you’re for everyone in the present, you’re no one. […] [She] didn’t exist” (Solomon 95). It is here that Solomon posits the idea that it is dangerous for identity to be solely constructed of a traumatizing history. When Yetu was a vessel for “everyone in the past” as the historian, it essentially erased her personhood. She existed as a way for the past to emerge into the present and not as an individual who had needs. Despite her role being an important one in the community, Yetu as a person “didn’t exist” because she was only defined by the memories that she carried inside her. She is then positioned as a lost individual because she is constantly weighed down by the “Six hundred years of pain” (Solomon 94) that she is holding on to. It is no wonder then, that her subsequent rejection of her role as Historian becomes a way for her to explore who she is outside of the suffering of her ancestors. Yetu takes a bold act by moving away from being “just a shell for their whims” (Solomon 94) to an entity that is complex and multifaceted.

Yetu’s struggle with personal identity then transforms into a way to resist the narratives that try to define enslaved people and their ancestors solely through a painful history. By noting that her role as an archive of “everyone in the past” made her “just a shell” for the Wanjinru to use for their benefit, she is rejecting the same subjugation that her ancestors on the Middle Passage endured, since they were not given the ability to engage their autonomy and explore their own personality. This passage about the complexities of identity is then a form of resistance because it widens the narrow confines in which Yetu exists as a Wanjinru and allows for the expansion of what it means to be a Wanjinru through the idea that individuals can be more than their trauma. This then allows Yetu and her people to stop the cycle of oppression and suffering by not allowing it consume their personhood.