Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran's Memoir

by Khadijah Queen

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 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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Military Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

Published August 5, 2025

About the author

Khadijah Queen is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Anodyne (Tin House 2020), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2025 the Foundation for Contemporary Arts recognized Queen’s work with the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea, a memoir about her time in the U.S. Navy alongside short histories of maritime women, is forthcoming from Legacy Lit/Hachette in August 2025.

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Khadijah Queen is an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech; she earned her PhD from the University of Denver and previously published books of poetry. Her 2025 memoir Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea recounts her turbulent 20s in the 1990s, when she turned to enlistment in the US Navy to try to find solutions to complex problems she was facing.

This memoir's biggest focus is her Navy years, where, like many women and people of color in the armed services, Queen faced rampant sexism and racism. Queen details many incidents that she personally experienced, as well as many she witnessed experienced by her fellow women and people of color, as well as several gay friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, the culture of the Navy and fear for one's own status were usually deterrent enough to preclude speaking up and helping colleagues. Queen ultimately ended her enlistment after giving birth to her son in her mid/late 20s with minimal support from the child's father, realizing that long-term the Navy wouldn't help her accomplish her goal of getting her education paid for while still being able to be present in her son's life. Though the memoir doesn't focus on Queen's subsequent experiences (I wish it had!), she does include a lot of context about her unstable family situation throughout her childhood and 20s.

For me, the mark of a good memoir is the ability to reflect back on one's life experiences to share them in a way that shows emotional growth and distills universal themes. Disappointingly, this memoir falls short of that mark for me. There's a tremendous amount of detail about individual incidents, but comparatively little reflection on why Queen acted the way she did at the time and what time and maturity have taught her about why others in her story may have acted in the ways that they did. I'm unsure if this was a deliberate narrative choice or not.

Further reading:
PHD to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life by Elaine Richardson
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley Ford
Dare to Fly: Simple Lessons in Never Giving Up by Martha McSally

My statistics:
Book 301 for 2025
Book 2227 cumulatively

[Tracie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating story for me particularly because I have a brother who served in the Navy. So this look into service from the perspective of a poetic, insightful black woman was so interesting.

I think that the format of the memoir was harder to appreciate in audio. The research about female sailors and ship captains that started each section was so interesting, but also made the story feel out of order at times. But the audio is read by the author, which I love. So overall I wish I held a copy of the book in my hands while I listened.

My other criticism is that even though the book is meant to be about her time in the Navy, I wanted an epilogue with the info about how the author’s life turned out. In the audio all sense of time was lost and I didn’t remember what year the events took place.

[Brent · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a sad book. To start, I was a naval officer, almost all of my time in deck on Amphibious ships. The same 'deck' the author treats with contempt as being beneath her; let me inform the author that she wouldn't have survived BMCM Villanueva, a Filipinio chief who put up with no shit from whiners like Queen. She is a classic example of the '80/20 rule' where 80% of leadership's time is sucked up by the 20% who can't/won't adapt to naval life. The author didn't like the food? Suck it up, buttercup, we ALL ate the same - the wardroom was serviced out of the same galley as mess decks, the only difference is that the officer's were charged out of pocket for our meals. To sum it up, this is one individual's experience about how they couldn't cut it in the fleet and now want to whine about it.

OBTW, my last ship was the first surface warship to integrate women with the all male crew, which was done pretty successfully. None of our female shipmates was as big a PITA as this author makes herself out to be; I guess we just got lucky to avoid her. For example, I never had to bail out any of my female sailors from a Tijuana jail after it was placed off-limits.

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy for review. All opinions are my own. This was a beautifully written memoir of one woman’s experience in life with Navy, from recruitment to leaving. This first hand account really helped me understand what she had to endure and how it shaped her as a person, the honesty was admirable and I truly felt like I was with her every step of the way through her life experiences. Breaking the silence is so important and I really respect and appreciate her speaking out about her experiences in such a brave way.

[Kate Maruyama · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absorbing, infinitely readable book. Queen openly shares all of the pieces of her life that led up to her joining the navy, got her through, and brought her out the other side. The beautiful prose, in delectably brief chapters, is interspersed with stories of fierce women of the sea through history. You will come away changed by Queen's journey and feeling more connected to life and to strong women whose historical stories have been erased. Highly recommend.

[Katelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir was difficult to follow at times, partly due to the number of characters we were introduced to and their names and titles being used interchangeably as well as my lack of understanding of how the Navy works. Queen’s experience was filled with racism and trauma and it was a heavy yet powerful read, especially given the generational trauma she endured.

[Debra Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The audiobook was read by the author. This was a very personal story about Ms Queen’s experiences in the Navy (late 1990s - early 2000s) and her own family and personal history growing up.

Her experiences are so different from my own. So, I think that this was a valuable text for me. Stories like this help me to understand that people come into situations with so many different perspectives.

[readbymonet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Beautifully written. Thank you to Legacy Lit Boks for the free copy to review.

[MARIANA VILLALOBOS]

No lo puede acabar. Alomejor en otro momento

[David Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very close to my childhood and time in the Army. Although, I never experienced the sexism or racism that Queen experienced.

[Michelle Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Books Amongst Friends · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library Book/Book Overall: 3/5
Audiobook/Narration: 3.5/5

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting first hand look at abuses in the American military industrial complex. It's not shocking, but it is disappointing, particularly now.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the life of an enlisted woman in the Navy in 2000. Now I want to read more...a female officer, an enlisted woman in the Army, etc.