As Effie and Tavia trade narration from chapter to chapter we see how Tavia struggles to hide her nature as a siren, and Effie attempts to discover more about the history of her parents and what could be the cause of a number of strange symptoms that she has been living with and get worse and worse as we dive deeper into her narrative. There are several plot threads within A Song Below Water that drive the story forward, namely several mysteries going on in the life of Effie, the other protagonist. This extra layer of persecution is a major theme it uses the fantastical context as a bridge to show how Black lives, and particularly the lives of Black women, are disregarded and undervalued. While at one time sirens were known across a spectrum of identities, in the present time they are exclusively known to be Black women. For protagonist Tavia, the cost is that she must keep her status as a siren completely secret. That recognition, however, comes at a cost. The primary one being that many of the fantastic beings of legend that are in our world relegated to myth are instead fully realized and recognized here. The world of A Song Before Water is incredibly like our own, with a few key differences.
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