BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Finding herself on the high seas.

When Queen’s sister Linda’s drug addiction prevented her from properly caring for her children, her mother uprooted her and her sister, Naima, from Los Angeles to move to Michigan. Queen was forced to withdraw from the community college she attended in California and found it impossible to continue her studies at Eastern Michigan University. She felt trapped and hopeless until a Navy recruiter approached her at RadioShack, where she worked, and encouraged her to enlist. The promise of a fully funded education, combined with a ticket out of Michigan, was enough to motivate Queen to sign up, a decision that changed her life. In the Navy, Queen and her female colleagues faced intense sexual harassment. Queen is Black, so the harassment was accompanied by racism. The author struggled with her physical health, suffering a painful miscarriage. Before leaving the Navy with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, she gave birth to a baby boy, which unexpectedly saved her life: Pregnant, she left her assigned ship, the USS Cole, before Yemeni troops blasted a hole through its center, killing some of her fellow sailors and traumatizing the rest. She emerged from her former life with a newfound sense of strength and confidence in her ability to navigate the future. Queen is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, and her narration glimmers with humor, frankness, and vulnerability. She beautifully balances empathy for her past self with a trenchant analysis of the systems that shaped her life story.

A poetic page-turner of a memoir about a Black woman’s time in the Navy.