1619 project
A01=Tara Roberts
adventure
adventure books
adventure memoirs
African American history
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
american history
Author_Tara Roberts
autobiographies
autobiography
automatic-update
biographies
biographies and memoirs
biographies of women
biography
Black history
black history books
book club books
books for women
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BGA
Category=DNBA
Category=DNC
Category=NHTS
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
diving
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
exploration
feminism
historical biographies
inspirational books for women
Language_English
memoir
memoirs
Middle Passage
PA=Not yet available
PADI
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
SCUBA diving
shipwrecks
slave ships
social justice
softlaunch
true stories
us history
wanderlust
women
women in history
Product details
- ISBN 9781426223754
- Weight: 561g
- Dimensions: 158 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jan 2025
- Publisher: National Geographic Books
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them - and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.
In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.
Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.
Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who documents shipwrecks that once carried captive Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. Their stories—and the stories of the divers, historians, archaeologists, and communities she meets along the way—became the podcast series Into the Depths, which has been featured in more than 200 media outlets. Tara is a TED Ignite Fellow at the 2025 TED conference. In 2022, Roberts became the first Black female explorer to grace the cover of National Geographic magazine and was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. A former Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab, she has worked as an editor for publications including Essence and CosmoGirl, published her own magazine, and edited several books for girls. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
