Reclaiming Mermaids

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Ashley Sims

Medieval Western depictions of mermaids have been used as a means to exert control over women. “Church leaders needed a feminine, dangerous, and lustful counterpart to their upstanding men. This is where mermaids came in.” (Scribner Ch.1) Christianity sculpted femininity as harmful to faith and devastator of mankind. “Their ultimate goal remained tethered to decentering the feminine.” (Scribner Ch.1) In contradiction to this tradition, Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film “The Water Will Carry Us Home” illustrates mermaids as bearers of life. Employing an African perspective, Tesfaye challenges Western traditional operation of mermaids by using them to continue life rather than destroy it. By re-imagining the death of those killed at the hands of White Western oppressors, “The Water Will Carry Us Home” not only reclaims History, it reclaims mermaids.

A key component to presenting an African perspective is the framing of the animation with Yoruban and other African ritual. The film begins with clips of Tesfaye performing living ritual. Among the many images presented, Tesfaye is found mapping stars (0:53) and baring her stretched ears (0:55). These two images hold importance because they ground non-conformational history. African astrology dates back to ancient civilizations of Africa. Modern astrology gained its foundation from African astrology. By representing astrology in the form of star mapping, Tesfaye is recognizing contributions from early African civilizations. This confirms the fact that Africans were not lacking in educational cultivation. Contrary to what conquerors of African communities have attempted to illustrate, these cultures were not obtuse or primitive. Tesfaye’s stretched ears characterize a long-held African tradition that symbolizes wisdom and status. This tradition was not only practiced among Africans. It was a widespread custom, transcending cultures globally such as: Aztecs, Mayans, Ancient Greeks, Buddhists, among others. Westerns view stretched ears as a marker for savages. In baring her stretched ears, Tesfaye persuades her audience to recognize the cultural significance. A practice that transcends cultures globally and symbolizes knowledge and power. These first notable images not only begin to ground an African perspective, but they reinstate African history and culture as universally significant.

Furthering an African perspective, Tesfaye presents Yoruban Gods; or Orishas in her animation. The Orishas, Yemaya and Shango, a mother and son pair, are protecting the captured Africans. Yemaya is the Orisha of the sea, motherhood, and femininity. (4:20) She gives and protects life. Shango is the Orisha of thunder and lightning, he is a source of fertility and embodies masculinity. He uses his powers to hinder the progress of the ship. (2:48) Watching these two Gods, man and women, working together to hinder the slave ship, upends Christianity’s use for mermaids. The church’s mermaid depictions strove to reduce women in order to uplift men (as reiterated by Vaughn Scribner). Presenting the god of femininity and the god of masculinity in harmony, working together to protect their people, subverts the values of the Christian God. Unlike the reborn mermaids in the film, Yemaya is illustrated with a split tail. (4:50) The Christian church utilized a split tail to represent “feminine lust and danger” (Scribner). Illustrating the Orisha Yemaya, protector of women and renewer of life, with a split tail positively represents women’s sexuality as bearers of life. In explicitly giving a god a split tail, Tesfaye is reclaiming mermaids as a positive representation of women and their sexuality.

the intended end for pregnant women 4:06

“The Water Will Carry Us Home” re-imagines the brutal end that White western oppressors intended for pregnant women aboard their ship. (4:06) She re-gifts them life twice: by rendering them as mermaids (4:32) and by telling their stories. Reimagining their savage death with the formation of mermaids reclaims History by undermining their erasure. Closer examination of the mermaids after their rebirth shows that they all have a third eye. (4:40) In Yoruban culture, the third eye is the eye of the ancestors. Restoring these women as ancestors means they spawn descendants. Their genes and their stories are passed on. The dialogue of the atrocities of the Middle Passage is silenced because it is not something that society wants in conversation. It is common to cover up cruelty, especially in the case of mainstream society being the hand of that cruelty. Recreating these women as ancestors ceases the attempted erasure at the hands of the oppressor and reclaims History.

Throughout the film, real newspaper clippings are used to ground the animation in history. (3:05), (2:59) Tesfaye wants the audience to bear in mind that this is a historical narrative. In addition to the newspaper clippings, Tesfaye uses her ritual framings to ground the story in authenticity. At the end of the animation the Orisha Yemaya is clutching a white flower. (4:58) Then, cut to Tesfaye, throwing white flowers into the ocean. (5:20) Showing Yemaya interacting with one of the flowers that the living Tesfaye is throwing into the ocean further establishes the re-imagining into reality. Grounding the notion that this Orisha is out there as well as the emancipated mermaids. In addition, her ritual settles the account into reality when she is within the locked door. (5:45) In the beginning the live action is shown before the story is unlocked. Afterwards, Tesfaye is locked into the narrative, (5:57) suggesting the story’s reality, grounding the narrative, reclaiming history.

The doors locking her into the story 5:57

Telling the story of the Middle Passage in a digestible way operates to preserve the ancestry of people who were intended for an unrecoverable death. Lineage is continued when those thrown overboard are re-gifted with life during their mermaid transformation. Reclaiming life in turn reclaims History and narrative. Illustrating mermaids as bearers of life rather than destroyers of it upends the church’s aim to decenter the feminine. Tesfaye presents a positive representation of female sexuality with her mother mermaids. Reclamation of mermaids through an African perspective confutes the White western oppression of erasure.

Decolonizing History in “The Water Will Carry Us Home”

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Sierra Cruz-Phillips

In Gabrielle Tesfaye’s “The Water Will Carry Us Home” at timestamp 3:36, her imagery is fluid, featuring floating, womb-like forms with gentle water coloring, both of which create a space of rebirth, continuity, and liberation for a people considered lost to history. This imagery de-centers land as the main source of history on earth and instead portrays the ocean as an ancestral world of transformation (4:30), thus imploring her audience to perceive history from a decolonized point-of-view.

The setting in the given frame isn’t merely a backdrop but a fully lived in, active, and inhabited world. The use of water color dissolves borders and boundaries and creates something more fluid and alive, contrasting that of the static and grounded imagery associated with land. In Western civilization, history is written on and in monuments and borders; it is fixed and owned. Imagery in the short film rejects that, through the frame, ancestry (the figures) is something in motion and situated in memory rather than geography. By turning to water, Tesfaye implores her audience to see from a decolonized point of view. In resisting the idea that home, belonging, and history are anchored to land, one remembers the history of people thrown to the sea. There are people, such as the Igbo people, whose history—usually that of migration—is tied to the ocean. In this case, the ocean is a sort of archive without any edges where spirits go to live, transform, and remember.

What is most striking in the frame is the curled, womb-like figures. Though these women’s bodies were tossed in the sea with intentions of death, the imagery of the figures suggests a sense of rebirth despite not being on solid ground of earth. These forms are untethered; they float in suspension, emphasizing a weightlessness to a rootedness. Furthermore, many of the figures cradle their wombs; their nurture is literally happening in water, much like how we are born from the water in the womb. The ocean itself becomes a symbol of the womb, a sight of gestation instead of intended destruction from Western colonizers. Western ideology often imagines birth and creation coming from solid ground—Adam from Earth and civilization from soil, for example. Tesfaye shifts this land-centric point of view to that of creation from the sea. This aligns more closely with African mythologies, where water spirits (such as Omambala mentioned in the film) embody life and power. The given frame, specifically, reframes the Ocean as a source giving life rather than devouring it, offering a counter narrative to that of a Westernized history. The Igbo people are depicted as a part of history that lives on instead of lost souls in the sea.

A few frames later, at timestamp 4:30, we see the floating figures transform into merpeople with a third eye in between their brows. Given research, the Third Eye is significant in Indian cultures to someone’s intuition and trust in a higher power that cannot be seen. Tesfaye uses the Third Eye as a visual assertion that spiritual intuition is as much of a legitimate form of history as written history, especially in a world where African culture and history was neglected and was never documented in the first place. Furthermore, each of the transformed merpeople have a Third Eye depicting this intuitive truth, or knowledge, as being carried in one’s body, community, and spirit. This depiction of these newly transformed beings carrying their knowledge challenges Eurocentric histories where “true” knowledge is found solely in written archives and documentation. Tesfaye’s recentering of African systems that honor spiritual sight as a form of culture and history sequentially restores knowledge erased or suppressed by means of colonization. By reclaiming history from a colonial subjective version, the floating figures/merpeople are not mere objects of violence but are subjects of spiritual and knowledgeable authority.

The inclusion of mermaids and collage artwork, both in frame 3:36 and 4:30, depicts African diaspora “hybrid” experiences. Tesfaye’s artwork itself is a collage, including the merpeople depicted; the art is assembled piece by piece, containing memories, oral stories, and traditions of African cultures, building and completing a history untold by colonizers. As seen from her official website, Tesfaye herself comes from a multicultural background, descending from a Jamaican and Ethiopian background, and has lived in places such as Thailand and India. Her experience as a Black woman oriented around many cultures, genres, and narratives bleeds into her short film. In turn, her film analyzes eco-critical frameworks from and in relation to African experiences that are “hybrid,” much like herself. By emphasizing merpeople as symbols of hybrid narratives, Tesfaye rejects colonial ideologies that view mixed or hybrid diasporic cultures as being less legitimate to history.

Tesfaye’s short film invites the audience to rethink how history is written. Reworking history by crossing merfolk narratives with African cultures reclaims history by depicting a different narrative than those, namely from colonial points of view, previously told in Western history. That a terra-centric history is not the only history, just because it is what is commonly taught. The enslaved people who were thrown out to sea have a history, and though it may not be on land, it lives on. “The Water Will Carry Us Home” creates a more rounded and whole version of the past, and asks those watching to recognize the importance of understanding a history beyond Western archives.

Discovery #2

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Hahnnah Palafox

The Ocean as Living History

In Gabriella Tesfaye’s short film, “The Water Will Carry Us Home,” she reimagines the Ocean as a living history, depicting it as a place that holds the souls and voices of the enslaved, transforming their anguish into freedom and renewal. The use of Mermaids in Tesfaye’s film explores the concept that the Ocean not only remembers and preserves but also restores. Her stop-motion film paves the way for lost voices to be brought to the surface.

Following the ships that sailed through the Middle Passage, Tesfaye’s film highlights the lives of numerous enslaved Africans who were thrown overboard into the sea. At 3:38 of the video, Tesfaye shows someone being thrown from the ship, depicting how “unwanted” Africans were meant to be forgotten. Not only is this film made with hand-drawn art, but Tesfaye also uses cutouts of real enslaved Africans. This enhances the reality of the story she is telling, as authentic pictures of historical events help prove to the watchers that these are real stories. One minute later, at 4:38, a water “spirit” is shown following close behind the ship. This water spirit takes the form of a Mermaid and presents the notion that she is protecting the History of the Africans aboard the vessel. At 4:20 of the video, we see this Mermaid spirit whispering close to one of the abandoned Africans. Rather than seeing the Ocean as a void of the Earth, she illustrates it as a form of consciousness. Using this spirit to reimagine the Ocean as a place that holds living archives of their stories. She highlights the essence of the Ocean as it absorbs and remembers the souls of the enslaved, ultimately reviving their spirits. These bodies and stories, which were meant to be erased, have been preserved and protected by the Ocean. Tesfaye turns a moment of horror into beauty by displaying the Ocean as a place of safety and stability for these forgotten stories. This accentuates the concept that the Ocean holds on to the stories that History wants to silence. By giving the water its own voice, Tesfaye highlights the importance of protecting the humanity of the people who were denied it on land.

The main Mermaid depicted in Tesfaye’s film serves as a kind of guardian to their lost souls. At 4:32 in her short film, three lost souls are shown being transformed into Mermaids, ultimately preserving their cultural history. The Mermaid portrayed in this short film serves as a spiritual rebirth for the enslaved, transforming their suffering into a new beginning. These people have been given a second life away from the pain and suffering they endured on land. Tesfaye’s Mermaid creates a haven for these souls, reinforcing the idea that ancestral traditions survive through the Ocean despite erasure. The Mermaids embody the essence of the Ocean, restoring souls and humanity within these forgotten memories. At 4:46 of her short film, Tesfaye shows the mending of a family whose lives were meant to be lost at sea. A mother, father, and baby are the main focus of this scene, emphasizing how the Mermaid carries out the Ocean’s role in preserving their souls. By restoring their agency and identity, the Mermaid in this story brings a sense of belonging to those who were forcibly removed from their homes. Ultimately, illustrating how the Ocean acts as a form of History, giving new life and preserving the souls of the Africans whose stories were suppressed.

Through her rich imagery and artistic language, Gabriella Tesfaye transforms the Ocean into an active form of History and rebirth. Her short film reinforces the idea that the Ocean is the keeper of their souls and stories. She restores the History of the Middle Passage through her exposure and remembrance of their History as protected by the Ocean. “The Water Will Carry Us Home” serves as a voice for the enslaved, demonstrating that the Ocean preserves not only their pain but also their identity, strength, and link to their ancestors.

Week 12: The Water Will Carry Us Home—The Ocean as a Preservation of History

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Annie Moscardini

Gabrielle Tesfaye’s short film “The Water Will Carry Us Home” establishes that this is not the white-washed, Christian version of history that we are told in high school about the transatlantic slave trade. Tesfaye doesn’t set out to give us a realistic explanation; however, she sets out to tell a story, which is neglected by the education system as a whole. We are told that the transatlantic slave trade was tragic, but that’s about all we learn. We learn nothing of what happened to these lost souls who died during the journey from the continent of Africa to the “New World.” We don’t even know the stories of those enslaved people before they became enslaved people. What Tesfaye sets out to do is offer a story for these souls, almost as if she were granting them a final resting wish to tell their stories.

The transitions between watching real-life Tesfaye holding a ritual to the painted stop motion illustrating the slave trade back to real-life Tesfaye demonstrate not just the past and present day, but also represent what stories can be told. Tesfaye, in the “real world,” is able to tell her story because she can create something that communicates her story. She creates this art that punctuates her existence to the world. But for the lost souls of the slave trade, they cannot. What Tesfaye does is create a story for them so that they may not be forgotten. Tesfaye offers them a story that does not lead to a watery, unmarked death. Instead, she offers them new life in the underwater, being reborn and returned to the water—the water from which we all came.

When we go back to real-life Tesfaye, we see her plugging her headphones into the sand. Yes, she physically connects herself to the land, but she also listens to the voices of the ancestors whose lives were lost. She honors them by hearing them, then creating something to tell their story. The land and the ocean both act as an archive in these instances, preserving the history that has been lost to, ironically, an ocean. Their souls might have been lost to the ocean, but the ocean gave them a home. It gave them a second life, as Tesfaye aims to communicate in her film.

Week 11: The Water will Carry Us Home

Posted on November 3, 2025 by Nellie Murphy

In this short film, directed by Gabriella Tesfaye, she illustrates a terrifying truth about the ocean’s history, yet still manages to tell a beautiful, almost comforting story. We all learned about the Middle Passage in high school or middle school history classes, but I fear we were shielded from the gruesome details and horrifying tactics used to transport the victims. I never before thought of the Middle Passage as “Ocean History” necessarily. I saw it as a history of how slaves were transported from one land mass to another. This stop motion film illuminated the fact that the Ocean itself can very much be a holder of history.

These poor pregnant women depicted in the film were thrown overboard and drowned in the sea. That is just one of those truly heartbreaking truths. They now rest (hopefully peacefully) on the ocean floor. They had to endure a horrible, watery death that could never be justified. Tesfaye’s film tells an alternative death story for these women, honoring the Water Spirit, “Omambala”. The ocean has inspired religious practices and gods/goddesses since the beginning of time. Ancient peoples knew the water to have much more history than modern people may ever be able to comprehend. The telling of this story from the perspective of the sea, the true historical setting of the Middle Passage, may be exactly how we need to view it. How many slave bodies does the sea floor hold? Do their souls still reside there? Just how much History was thrown overboard to be forgotten forever? The sea holds secrets that humans wish to rid their minds of, a dumping place of sorts, where all can be cast away, and essentially washed away from reality. When you think of the Ocean as a graveyard, you think of every story, every mishap, or murder that led those bodies there. If the ocean could talk, if it had a civilization to write the stories and illustrate the tragedies, would we have more respect for it? I think it would allow us to know the human race in a whole new light.

Re-gift of Life

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Ashley Sims

In “The Water Will Carry Us Home” Gabrielle Tesfaye re-gifts life to women who were left for dead in the Middle Passage. She re-gifts them life when she transforms them into mermaids, but she also re-gifts them life by telling their stories. The use of animation and the fantastical theme of mermaids gives a story that is painful, and because of that overlooked, a voice. The dialogue of the atrocities of the Middle Passage is silenced because it is not something that society wants in conversation. It is common to cover up cruelty, especially in the case of mainstream society being the hand of that cruelty. The theme of mermaids and continuation of life rather than death makes it less challenging to talk about, as well as share to future generations. Share to children who should, however painful, learn their people’s history. By continuing these abandoned mother’s existence in the sea, Tesfaye continues their existence in conversation for generations to come.

Tesfaye not only reclaims history but she reclaims mermaids. In other mermaid stories we have read, different cultures have used mermaids as warnings. Early Europe used them to warn of the dangers of women’s sexuality. They have been used to justify control of women’s bodies, environmental destruction, and even colonialism. To justify man’s dominion. But Tesfaye challenges traditional use of mermaids by using them to continue life rather than destroy it. Instead of a warning, Tesfaye’s mermaids are a representation of not just a tragedy, but a human tragedy. While our past mermaid stories have been about the other, Tesfaye’s mermaids are interconnected with human experience.

Depicting Omambala with a split tail furthers Tesfaye’s reclamation of mermaids. Split tails were generally used to negatively represent women’s sexuality. Giving a split tail to the God Omambala who renews life to these overboard women and children positively represents women’s sexuality as bearers of life.

Remembered

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Melissa Vincent

In Gabrielle Tesfaye’s film The Water Will Carry Us Home the artist shows a vision of the people murdered in the Middle Passage during the slave trade as still being part of this world even after their deaths. As the ocean is often depicted as the void of Earth, the act of killing in this way left little physical evidence of the atrocities committed compared to the terrestrial that proceeded and followed the path of the Middle Passage. This film shows how those murdered are still part of Earth even when they are not part of the terrestrial plane.

Being stolen from their homes and land, Tesfaye depicted a life in the ocean where the water deities of mermaids welcome those murdered by drowning to a new home in the water. Many of the people in the film who are killed are pregnant women, with their deaths it shows the end of lineage that happened during the heinous act of enslavement.

Tesfaye included in her film not only the second or next lives of those murdered but the continuation of life in the ocean. There is love, community, and descendants; all of the things enslavers thought they ended by throwing people into the void of the ocean to cover their crimes. These murderers at the time viewed this as minor disruption to the surface world, but no matter what they believed the bodies and souls of those killed stayed in the world and are still part of it. These brutal acts are remembered and those lost are honored and live on in the world that they will always be a part of. Tesfaye also shows a person with white hair who is murdered by drowning, there is generational significance to this as elders are often the source of knowledge and explanation. Without elders’ generational exchanges, knowledge will be stopped and in turn strength in cultural understanding and beliefs. But Tesfaye shows that the knowledge was not stopped.

Tesfaye bookends this vision depicted in paintings and stop-motion with filming herself in spiritual practice, adding not only that there is a terrestrial remembrance but shifting the images away from the imagined images and grounding it in a reality that this happened to real people. She connects to the sand and water and can hear the voices of those whose next lives are within the ocean, showing the continuation that happened not only in the ocean but on land.

swallowing up

Mermaids: Literature & the Environment

ECL 305. Fall 2025. Professor Pressman

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