On February 25th, storyteller, adventurer, traveler, and National Geographic-sponsored memoirist Tara Roberts visited Western Illinois University as part of her book tour for Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging. Her book tells the story of slave ships sunk and lost in the transatlantic slave trade, and the stories of particular individuals lost on the journey from Africa to North America.

 Beginning her lecture, Roberts introduced herself, saying, “This work is about connectivity.” She asked her audience to indulge her and to connect with one another, requesting that they close their eyes and breathe in and out three times, feeling the room. To break the silence, Roberts said, “Approximately 12,000 slave ships sailed.” Before she started this work, she said, “I couldn’t tell you the name of one of those ships.” She has now discovered many of those names, and asked her audience to confront the fact that there were “approximately 1.8 million deaths – who’s mourning them?” she asked us.

Recounting the story behind her memoir, Roberts remembered a visit she made to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., “In 2016, something completely changed my world . . . [before this] I wasn’t happy.” Roberts continued, “I visited the NMAAHC . . . I saw a picture of black women in wetsuits on a boat . . . I’d never seen that.” Roberts recalls that she stared at the image while researching its origins for over an hour. Her research led her towards discovering Dive With a Purpose, a national organization focused on locating and documenting shipwrecks (predominantly those associated with the African slave trade). Roberts reached out to and began volunteering with this organization. After briefly working with DWP, Roberts quit her former job, saying, “I quit! This work was important.” Roberts began following DWP on different dives and missions. She became a certified diver, and a full-time volunteer. She began cataloging this work, narratively documenting every expedition that DWP went on.

Roberts explained why she was so quick to give her all to this organization: “This work is about power. We are not going to wait to bring these stories back . . . this history matters.” 

Immediately after she started volunteering with DWP, Roberts began a narrative podcast affiliated with National Geographic, entitled Into the Depths. This podcast focused on telling the stories of both the individuals lost in the slave trade and those individuals who dove to recover stories with DWP. When Into the Depths “went live,” Roberts recalls intense praise for the stories she shared. Because of its instant popularity, National Geographic magazine highlighted Into the Depths in its March 2022 edition, featuring Roberts prominently on the cover.

Roberts never intended to receive the success she now garners, but she is glad that these formerly lost stories are now being told. Before publishing Written in the Waters, Roberts had a conversation with two of her nieces, eleven and twelve year old black girls. Roberts recalls asking them, “Do you know your history?” The girls responded, saying, “no.” Roberts wrote and published Written in the Waters as a response to this conversation. This memoir was written as a way to tell those lost stories, but also as a way to allow individuals to connect with their heritage, honoring their past. Roberts concluded her lecture by saying, “I started out writing blog entries, moved to podcasts, and wrote a book.” For her, the most important thing this work does is “honoring the past in a really big and unique way.”