Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging

For fans of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, this searing memoir by a National Geographic explorer recounts one woman’s epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean--and find her place in the world.

＂Tara Roberts is a pioneer and an inspiration. Her work does not so much ’unearth’ the past as pull it respectfully out of the depths of the sea. I am deeply moved by this book, and by her journey.＂--Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love

When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the scuba and 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, downloaded a million times and featured in more than 100 media outlets. 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.