Trident Poet Series: Khadijah Queen - BETWEEN THE DEVIL & THE DEEP BLUE SEA

From award winning poet Khadijah Queen, a coming-of-age memoir about family, survival, and one servicewoman’s search for autonomy.
Yanked out of college and torn from her sunny hometown of Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Khadijah Queen finds herself sharing a basement apartment with her mother and sister and working two retail jobs in snowy, tiny Inkster, Michigan. Longing to escape the cycle of her family’s poverty, incarceration, and addiction, she joins the US Navy, determined to earn money to finish college and make it back to L.A. on her own terms.
But soon after Queen completes her grueling training and boards a doomed destroyer, she finds herself faced with near-constant sexual harassment, demeaning labor assignments, and overt racism. Stuck on a ship with nowhere to hide, she looks to poetry, literature, and letters from home to get through the long days and maintain her dignity. She keeps her head down until the workplace hostility against women spills over into her dating life and threatens to derail everything she has worked for.
In trying to break through the unspoken code of silence between sailors, Queen must decide where her loyalties lie: with the Navy or within herself. Unflinching and masterfully penned, this memoir questions the promises of service to reveal the true price of being a woman at sea.

“Throughout, Queen is by turns vulnerable and fierce, making resonant observations about the complexities of war, womanhood, and perseverance. Readers will find much to admire.”―Publishers Weekly

“[Queen’s] 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.”

―Kirkus

"Queen hides nothing and doesn't shy away from reality, by far the greatest strength of her memoir. . .A perfect book for those who seek narratives with infrequently encountered points of view and all readers willing to have their perspectives challenged and dismantled, page by page."

―Booklist
"Prepare to be stunned. From the first few pages to this books’ roaring end, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea grabs readers by the throat and doesn’t let go."
―Miami Times
“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a large-hearted, compulsively readable memoir shot through with courage and razor-sharp intelligence. Moreover, Queen’s magnificent personal reckoning helps me to ponder what new forms of relation might be possible between ourselves, our nation, and the many institutions charged with stewarding the common good.”―Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winning poet
“Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea is yet another extension of the brilliant universe of Khadijah Queen, one where the pages are richly populated. With people, with places, with rich, granular details. And, with all of that population, still, an attention to and affection for each single part of the larger machine, which makes Queen's narrative world-building feel like it is reaching for you, demanding you to enter, and be walked through each place, each life, each passage of time. This book is a gift.” ―Hanif Abdurraqib, MacArthur Fellow, National Book Award finalist, and author of There’s Always This Year and A Little Devil in America
“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a breathtaking act of truth-telling—a fierce, unflinching anthem for every woman who’s ever been underestimated, overworked, or overlooked. Khadijah Queen's voice is raw and wise, furious and tender, resilient and unrelenting in a way that only poets can pull off. She shows how the systems we serve, whether the military or the criminal justice system, were not built for us, nor are they capable of holding our complexity, our pain, or our power. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is for every woman who has ever been told to sit down, shut up, or smile through the pain. This isn’t just a memoir—it’s a reckoning.”―Lara Love Hardin, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Lives of Mama Love
"Khadijah Queen writes with majestic grace about growing up the hard way, in sometimes searing circumstances, and then joining the Navy to pay for college. We watch in awe as she chases down her dream, undeterred by the many obstacles placed in her way, to become a literary star. This book is a testament to her grit, resolve, and unstoppable drive, and offers yet another example of Queen’s blazing talent. This memoir shimmers, it is so good."―Helen Thorpe, author of Just Like Us, Soldier Girls, The Newcomers, and Finding Motherland
“Narratives of military life so often falter by cutting away from the quotidian. Khadijah Queen’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea does the exact opposite; by working the beauty of her mind and intuition, humor and manifestations of home as both civilian and service member she brings new life to our reflections on structural violence and the importance of narrating an honest self through the real and re-imaginable world.”―Joseph Earl Thomas, author of Sink, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and Leviathan Beach --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

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