In the tradition of How to Say Babylon, a poet chronicles her experience as a Black woman service member in the U.S. Navy, from bootcamp to honorable discharge, that questions the promises of enlistment that are hostile to women.
13th October 2025
Hardcover
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Summary
In the tradition of How to Say Babylon, a poet chronicles her experience as a Black woman service member in the U.S. Navy, from bootcamp to honorable discharge, that questions the promises of enlistment that are hostile to women.
Description
It's the late 1990s-Tupac is taking over radio waves, Inkster, Michigan is as Midwest as ever, and a young Khadijah Queen has just been recruited to join the U.S. Navy while working her day job at RadioShack. In light of her dwindling college tuition fund, her mother's alcoholism and sisters' addictions, and an impending future of minimum wage retail jobs, Bootcamp doesn't sound so bad.
But soon after Khadijah completes her grueling training and boards her ship, finds herself in even more traumatic situations among strangers far from home. Surrounded by men in the sonar room, she struggles to maintain her dignity day after day while dealing with near-constant sexual harassment, weeks-long demeaning labor assignments, and overt racism from her coworkers. At first, she tries to bring honor to herself, her family, her division, and the navy, taking pride in her work while studying to become an officer and leaning on poetry to lift her spirits. Queen begins to wonder the issues she is faced with are worth what she was promised.Queen must conceal a miscarriage, a subsequent pregnancy, and domestic violence while enlisted. She must decide where her loyalties lie: the life that was prescribed to her, or the new, unknown life that awaits her? Masterfully penned, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a searing chronicle about family, survival and autonomy, and one woman's attempt to content with a workplace that is hostile to women.Critic Reviews
"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
About the Author
Khadijah Queen is the author of six books of poetry and prose, and co-editor Infinite Constellations (FC2 2023). Her works appear in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Harper's Magazine, The Poetry Review (UK) and widely elsewhere. She holds a PhD in English from University of Denver, and is a tenured professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech.
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13th October 2025
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