Written in the Waters

A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging

By: Tara Roberts

Narrated by: Tara Roberts

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.

For fans of adventurous women’s memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped.

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, DC, 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.

©2025 Tara Roberts (P)2025 Audible, Inc.

The story

Interesting memoir that describes the search for slave ships by Afro-Mercian’s as well as a personal journey of understanding by the author.

Things we need to know

This book will teach you history that standard schooling does not. Hearing it from a black woman’s perspective makes it even more unique and impactful.

Her point of view

Her narration was done w feeling and it brought me to where she was at the time

Grateful for this book!

This book shines a light on the concept of what it means to be home and find home. At times is was heavy and I had to take a break but what a beautiful experience the ancestors have given Tara and so many others of DWP. I highly recommend this listen!

Healing ❤️‍🩹

I would have like more of her stories about diving experience but I really disliked nothing