Name: The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
ISBN: 9781911590385

Wayetu Moore

A Memoir of Family, War and Peace

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women

Wayétu Moore

A Memoir

Ken Yuen

A very interesting recollection of a family's escape from Liberia, their struggles fitting in their new American home, and all the fractures of the prism inbetween. It feels very much like 3 or 4 stories combined by a uniting topic.

The early part of the book is a fascinating look at how a child might interpret a civil war and the violence surrounding her. After the time jump, the story is about what life is like to be dark skinned and a woman in America. And finally everything is tied together at the end.

Not all the parts fit together, but it's someone's real life. Who you are at six is essentially a different person than when you're thirty. In real life, not everything is resolved and tied up in a neat narrative bow. It's messy and true.

A powerful and poignant memoir of survival and resistance by the critically acclaimed author of She Would Be King, about her family's dramatic escape from the Liberian Civil War, and how they were eventually reunited My Ol' Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow. When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a party at home in Monrovia, Liberia. Yet all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, studying in faraway New York. Before they can be reunited, the Civil War breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking along dangerous roads to the relative safety of their ancestral village. Here they will hide until a remarkable rescue by a rebel soldier, who smuggles them across the border. The Dragons, The Giant, The Women spans this heartbreaking journey into childhood, and Moore's years adjusting to life in the USA, where she discovers a new kind of danger, as a black woman and an immigrant. This is an unforgettable memoir of the search for home in the midst of political upheaval, and an intimate story about the tenacious power of love and family. Wayétu Moore was born in Liberia and raised in Spring, Texas. She is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern Carolina. She teaches at the City University of New York's John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel She Would Be King is also published by ONE.

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women A Memoir of Family, War and Peace

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