South Street Seaport Museum Presents Book Club, Celebrating Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging by Tara Roberts at South Street Seaport Museum

Join the South Street Seaport Museum for the recurring maritime-themed book club with a special Black History Month book selection! Seaport Museum staff and special guests will stir up lively discussions informed by our shared love of literature, history, and preservation.

The event is free. Preregistration is encouraged. You don’t have to read the full selection to enjoy the event; everyone is welcome!

Written in the Waters A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging by Tara Roberts

When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the scuba and 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.

For Black History Month, the book club will read this lush and lyrical memoir that tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes Roberts from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales. 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.

Sign up here to join the book club and talk through this book with Museum staff and fellow readers.

Enjoy More That the Museum Offers

Access to the historic ships and exhibitions on view is not included with your ticket to this event. If you would like to explore more that the Museum has to offer, book in advance or ask Museum staff about General Admission tickets when you check in. General Admission is available Friday through Sunday, from 11am to 5pm and brings you aboard the 1885 tall ship Wavertree and 1908 lightship Ambrose at Pier 16, and into all current exhibitions on view in the first-floor Schermerhorn Row galleries at 12 Fulton Street. Your ticket also sets you on course to explore Maritime City, the Seaport Museum’s immersive, three-floor exhibition at A.A. Thomson & Co., located at 213 Water Street.

seaportmuseum.org/admission

About the South Street Seaport Museum

The South Street Seaport Museum, located in the heart of the historic seaport district in New York City, preserves and interprets the history of New York as a great port city. Founded in 1967, the Museum houses an extensive collection of works of art and artifacts, a maritime reference library, exhibition galleries and education spaces, working 19th century print shops, and an active fleet of historic vessels that all work to tell the story of “Where New York Begins.” seaportmuseum.org

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