New podcast navigates identity and personal narrative through shipwrecked slave ship artifacts
“There’s something about facing the actual material evidence of the past,” says podcast author Tara Roberts. “It can’t be denied… it’s no longer hidden.”
Courtesy of National Geographic
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was an enormous event that connected much of the globe. But those stories aren’t always told from the perspective of the descendants of slavery.
A new six-part National Geographic podcast series entitled, “Into the Depths,” explores the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the narratives of the estimated 12.5 million individuals who were stolen from African shores.
“I think that is what these wrecks offer us, it’s the opportunity to see our ancestors, to see that past in its full humanity and not just inside of pain, trauma and death. And then that becomes really powerful because that’s how then you begin to start to see yourself,” — Tara Roberts, author of National Geographic podcast “Into the Depths.”
Listen: Exploring the importance of identity and personal history in a new podcast.
Guest
Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow and a Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and the author of a National Geographic podcast, “Into the Depths.” Roberts says the work of uncovering personal history lineages as an African-American was intimidating at first but became fascinating, resolving, and grounding.
“I think that is what these wrecks offer us, it’s the opportunity to see our ancestors, to see that past in its full humanity and not just inside of pain, trauma and death,” she says. “And then that becomes really powerful because that’s how then you begin to start to see yourself.”
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