The horrors of slavery and the middle passage are something we hear about but don't fully comprehend and this is a fact I am confronted with every time I engage with even the smallest of pieces that speak on the topic. Mother of the Sea in just 47 pages wholly engaged, horrified, and radicalized me, inciting a feeling within me I have been looking for from a story for a long time.

I have so many thoughts and considering how short the story was I feel that this is a good indicator of how amazing I found it to be. Our main character, who is largely nameless, is forced into an impossibly nightmarish situation and Elliott's brief yet striking narration of the circumstances paints a vivid picture people now are widely unaware of until they take the initiative to learn about it themselves. The Middle Passage was a disgustingly brutal truth in the journey of enslaved Africans and I have found in my experience it is the least spoken about and Elliott thankfully does not shy away from its realities.

The most horrifying part for me (besides the obvious) was the character Olu. Watching a mixed-race man actively engage with, profit from, and almost enjoy (or at the very least be apathetic towards) the situation was a sickening experience. All I could think was "How dare you speak your mother's tongue that was stolen from her, and use a name you actually don't care about, to force your power over someone you don't see as kin but as property." It was a great representation of how people can pick and choose aspects of themselves, using what little privilege certain aspects of their identity allow them (I'm assuming this character was able to pass) to grasp what little pieces the system will throw at them, ignoring the fact that the very same system would sooner subjugate them than accept them.

Oddly enough my favourite part is not the story itself (although anything I say cannot discount the haunting beauty of the narrative and the way it was written) but in the author's note at the end. I found that my own experiences and feelings were reflected back at me as Zetta Elliott eloquently details her experience with religion and inspiration for this story.

While my own similar feelings hit a little later in life for me, reading about her journey and inspiration connected to me personally in a way I haven't experienced before. I found I loved the additions of Zetta's exploration of the Black feminine in fantasy and fiction exceedingly therapeutic.

This is the kind of story I wholeheartedly believe should be on the required reading lists of every middle/high school history class (though with the way things are going now it's more likely to get banned) and I can't wait to share this with more people in my life.