Keep your head down.
Stay steady, mind your business, and don’t compare yourself to others. You are where you are for a reason, don’t lose sight of it. There’s a prize at the end, and endurance is the only way to get it. You have a job to do and, as in the new memoir “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” by Khadijah Queen, you’ll do it until you can’t.
Khadijah Queen hated Inkster, Michigan.
She had begged to stay in L.A. but her mother ignored her pleas and moved the family to Inkster to take care of the at-risk children of Queen’s addicted eldest sister. Not old enough to stay in “Cali” by herself, but old enough to work and contribute to the household, Queen rushed to sign up for classes at a local Michigan college because she knew education was the only way to escape the situations that had her family in a stranglehold.
Alcoholism, drug abuse, no money, problems came like storms and when those problems forced her to drop her classes, she decided to join the Navy. A few years of service, she knew, and her college education would be free.
Happily, Boot Camp wasn’t so bad.
There were a handful of Black recruits and personnel who held Queen up when she felt sad and they gave her hope. She learned in Navy Boot Camp that she was a leader, but she wasn’t fully ready for it. She wanted to serve on a submarine and once there, she tried to just do her job but her white male shipmates made it difficult.
She endured their hazing and sexual harassment. She endured their racism and juvenile jokes. She endured a noose left laying on her study manuals.
Less than six months aboard, she says, “my anger had become a living thing, and even though I didn’t want it, I kept that anger close. It leapt ahead of me when it had to.”
Prepared 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. You plainly see author Khadijah Queen’s need to get away from near-poverty; it paces like a lion in a small cage. You’ll cringe at her maturity that doesn’t quite go far enough because you’ve probably been there, too. When she’s about to get in trouble for speaking her mind or because she’s impatient, you’ll squirm, knowing what’s coming. Authentic language puts you in uniform. Tragedy will hurt your heart. So will some of the people in this book when you learn what happens to them, but the story would be lesser without the rich presence of each of them and without Queen’s no-nonsense-ness, her boiling impatience, and her profanity-laced honesty.
Veterans may have some things to say about this one-of-a-kind book, as will feminists, and neither of them, nor you, should miss it. Start “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and it’ll keep your head down good.
