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The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir
FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHYAn engrossing memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United StatesWhen Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States.Spanning this harrowing journey in Moore’s early childhood, her years adjusting to life in Texas as a black woman and an immigrant, and her eventual return to Liberia, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is a deeply moving story of the search for home in the midst of upheaval. Moore has a novelist’s eye for suspense and emotional depth, and this unforgettable memoir is full of imaginative, lyrical flights and lush prose. In capturing both the hazy magic and the stark realities of what is becoming an increasingly pervasive experience, Moore shines a light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world, and calls us all to acknowledge the tenacious power of love and family.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 2, 2020
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January 4, 2021
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is a deeply heartfelt and lyrical memoir. Wayétu Moore's luminous prose conveys the horrors of the First Liberian Civil War through the uncomprehending eyes of a child. At the age five Moore 's existence is irrevocably altered. Her family is forced to flee their home in Monrovia. Her father tries to shield his daughters from the violence and death they encounter on the road to 'safety' (for example he tells them that the sound they keep hearing—gunfire—is made by drums, or that the dead people on the ground are 'sleeping').
While Moore doesn't shy away from the bloodshed caused by this civil war, she renders these events as she experienced them, when she was not fully aware of what was truly happening. She weaves a fairy-tale of sorts, with dragons (those who played a prominent role in the civil war), a giant (her father, her protector), and the women (her mother, a young rebel girl) whose acts of bravery ensured the safety of Moore and her sisters. I was moved by the way in which Moore's family stayed united as their world crumbled.
After Moore’s mother (who had been studying in New York and therefore was cut off from her husband and children after the war broke out) finds a rebel soldier who could smuggle them across the border to Sierra Leone, the Moore family move to America.
In recounting her childhood Moore details the way in which she was made fully aware of her status of 'outsider' in America. Racism, colourism, a sense of disconnect towards a culture that treats you as other, all of these things make Moore feel like she doesn't belong. What she witnessed as a child too, haunts her. In search for answers she flies back to Liberia. The narrative shifts then to her mother's perspective and Moore perfectly captures a mother's voice.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women details Moore's painful and unresolved past. Yet, however sobering her story is, readers are bound to be dazzled by the lore that shapes her tale.
Moore navigates the aftermath of Liberia's civil war, her family's migration to the U.S., her own relationship towards Liberia and her sense of displacement. This is a beautifully written and powerful story, one that recounts a family's arduous journey to safety, the separation and losses they experience, and the love and courage that brings them back together.
LitHub has recently published an interview with Wayétu Moore in which she discusses this memoir:
Wayétu Moore on What It Means to Tell “Our Story”.
Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
While Moore doesn't shy away from the bloodshed caused by this civil war, she renders these events as she experienced them, when she was not fully aware of what was truly happening. She weaves a fairy-tale of sorts, with dragons (those who played a prominent role in the civil war), a giant (her father, her protector), and the women (her mother, a young rebel girl) whose acts of bravery ensured the safety of Moore and her sisters. I was moved by the way in which Moore's family stayed united as their world crumbled.
After Moore’s mother (who had been studying in New York and therefore was cut off from her husband and children after the war broke out) finds a rebel soldier who could smuggle them across the border to Sierra Leone, the Moore family move to America.
In recounting her childhood Moore details the way in which she was made fully aware of her status of 'outsider' in America. Racism, colourism, a sense of disconnect towards a culture that treats you as other, all of these things make Moore feel like she doesn't belong. What she witnessed as a child too, haunts her. In search for answers she flies back to Liberia. The narrative shifts then to her mother's perspective and Moore perfectly captures a mother's voice.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women details Moore's painful and unresolved past. Yet, however sobering her story is, readers are bound to be dazzled by the lore that shapes her tale.
Moore navigates the aftermath of Liberia's civil war, her family's migration to the U.S., her own relationship towards Liberia and her sense of displacement. This is a beautifully written and powerful story, one that recounts a family's arduous journey to safety, the separation and losses they experience, and the love and courage that brings them back together.
LitHub has recently published an interview with Wayétu Moore in which she discusses this memoir:
Wayétu Moore on What It Means to Tell “Our Story”.
Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
May 13, 2020
Liberia went through its first Civil War from 1989 to 1966, during that period over 250,000 were killed and numerous families displaced and destroyed. The civil war was long and was devastating for many Liberians, including Wayteu Moore and her family. In The Dragons, The Giant, The Women: A Memoir is Moore’s second novel and first memoir that details in a very rich and moving way how the Liberian Civil war affected the trajectory of her family and how their lives were changed.
The memoir opens on Wayetus Moore’s fifth birthday celebration. She is at home in Monrovia, Liberia with her siblings, father, grandmother and extended family. Her mother is not present for the celebrations because she is studying on a scholarship in New York. In the middle of the celebration war breaks out and the family is forced to flee without any warning. They leave on foot with a bag each, walking and hiding until their reached the village of Lai. The three week journey is grueling, heart breaking, and captured so vividly in Moore’s writing. The family arrives in Lai, and waiting their next move. Weeks into their stay at Lai a rebel solider shows up to let Wayetu know her mom sent for them family and she will be smuggling them across the border into Sierra Leone.
While a lot of the book surrounds Wayetu’s experience in the civil war, how being displaced affect her, how to this present day it still affects her- the book is also way more than that. It gives insights into mother-daughter relationship, living like an immigrant and what is it like for a black woman growing up in a country that doesn’t value the blackness of her skin.
I absolutely enjoyed this memoir. I read, loved and was blown away by Moore’s She Would Be King so I was super excited to see that she would be releasing a Memoir because I STAN! Nothing could prepare me for how beautiful this memoir was, I wanted sooooo much more. Moore’s writing is so personal, so unforgettable, so beautiful and deeply nuanced. To go through this trauma, I cannot being to imagine, but how Moore explored it in her memoir was beautiful.
You NEED to read this!
The memoir opens on Wayetus Moore’s fifth birthday celebration. She is at home in Monrovia, Liberia with her siblings, father, grandmother and extended family. Her mother is not present for the celebrations because she is studying on a scholarship in New York. In the middle of the celebration war breaks out and the family is forced to flee without any warning. They leave on foot with a bag each, walking and hiding until their reached the village of Lai. The three week journey is grueling, heart breaking, and captured so vividly in Moore’s writing. The family arrives in Lai, and waiting their next move. Weeks into their stay at Lai a rebel solider shows up to let Wayetu know her mom sent for them family and she will be smuggling them across the border into Sierra Leone.
While a lot of the book surrounds Wayetu’s experience in the civil war, how being displaced affect her, how to this present day it still affects her- the book is also way more than that. It gives insights into mother-daughter relationship, living like an immigrant and what is it like for a black woman growing up in a country that doesn’t value the blackness of her skin.
I absolutely enjoyed this memoir. I read, loved and was blown away by Moore’s She Would Be King so I was super excited to see that she would be releasing a Memoir because I STAN! Nothing could prepare me for how beautiful this memoir was, I wanted sooooo much more. Moore’s writing is so personal, so unforgettable, so beautiful and deeply nuanced. To go through this trauma, I cannot being to imagine, but how Moore explored it in her memoir was beautiful.
You NEED to read this!
December 5, 2022
Oh man. I fell in love with Wayétu Moore as a writer through her debut novel She Would Be King (2018). The novel was sizzling with life, unique, and actually quite provocative. I loved how she used magical realism to uproot the traditional slave narrative, by giving some of her Black characters supernatural powers whilst also describing the birth of a nation through her fictional tale. It was superb, fresh, exhilarating. So much so that I was really looking forward to pick up Wayétu's first work of nonfiction. Alas! it was utterly disappointing!
In The Dragons, the Giant, the Women (2020), Wayétu Moore details growing up in Liberia during its first civil war (1989-1997), escaping the war, and building a new life in the United States. Even though The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is one of the few books that made me cry this year (– you have to have a heart of stone if you don't cry at that fairy tale family reunion where no one was harmed! –), it's one that didn't really stick with me, and one that, structurally speaking, has too many issues. It reads more like a first draft than a finished product tbh, which is such a shame!
This book begins on an April day in Caldwell, Liberia. It is Wayétu's fifth birthday. She's at home with her father, her siblings, her grandparents, and the family’s domestic servant, Torma. Her father, Gus, talks with family friends about the war. He dismisses his friends' concern that the rebels may soon approach, even though his missionary neighbors from China soon leave out of fear of danger. Mam, Gus's wife and the children's mother, is away in the US. Wayétu longs for her mother and wonders if Mam thinks of her often too.
One day, a neighbor bangs on the door at the Moore home, warning them that the rebels are approaching. The family flees at once to the forest. They make their way to a school in Monrovia where many Liberians seek shelter. However, they leave ETMI because Ol' Ma suspects that soldiers—or rebels disguised as soldiers—are kidnapping young girls after a mother wakes to find that her own daughter is missing. They trek through the country, sleeping in abandoned homes during the day and walking by night.
Ol' Ma thinks they ought to travel to Lai—the hometown of the Vai people. They make it across the border to Junde despite having to cross three checkpoints—including one where rebels nearly kill Gus—and take a canoe to the small village. After a while, a young female rebel soldier arrives and tells Gus that Mam has arrived to save him and the girls.
The narrative then shifts to Wayétu's current life in Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a freelance writer and consultant. She's recovering from the end of a two-year relationship and sees a therapist who prompts her to explore her history of loss. In doing so, Wayétu thinks less about her war experiences in Liberia and more about her years as a refugee in Stratford, Connecticut, where she spent her early childhood, and Spring, Texas, where she lived from age eight until she started college. She recalls her early experiences with racism and colorism. She also thinks about the isolation she felt due to being African and how, from childhood, she's had recurring dreams about Satta—the young woman who rescued her, her father, and her sisters.
Wayétu returns to Liberia to look for Satta. Unable to find her, Wayétu admits to herself that she actually came to adress her mother. Finally, she asks her mother why she left the family. Here, the narrative shifts again and Moore makes her mother the narrator of her own story.
Mam tells of how, as the civil war breaks out in Liberia, she's living in New York and attending graduate school at Columbia University. Fearing for the lives of her husband and children, she uses her student visa to help get them out. Upon landing in Libera, Mam learns of rebels who are willing to help people rescue their families in exchange for a fee. Mam decides to enlist the help of a young rebel girl named Satta, who is able to successfully reunite the family. Moore ends her memoir by noting that many people have stories of surviving war, and that not all of them are bad, some have a happy ending. Hers is one such story.
Even though the topic of Moore's memoir is interesting – the First Liberian Civil War and building a new life in the States – I feel like she kind of beat around the bush and we as readers don't learn anything. It's all quite superficially told. Moore's rendition of the Liberian Civil War pales in comparison to Mukasonga's rendition of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in her memoir, Inyenzi ou les cafards ("Cockroaches"). Moore doesn't tell us any facts, she's also not big on describing events or providing context for anything. To me, it felt like she didn't quite know what she wanted to say with this memoir.
My biggest gripe with The Dragons, the Giant, the Women are the narrative jumps. We jump from Moore's childhood to her counselling sessions as an adult to a weird final chapter written from her mother's point of view; especially that last chapter didn't work for me at all. It felt intrusive and inauthentic. What made Moore think that she could write in the name and from the perspective of her mother? It didn't work at all.
The incorporation of magical realism and folk tales, like the one of the dragon Hawa Undu, which Moore uses as an allegory for the president of Liberia, felt hollow and out of place, especially in comparison to her brilliant incorporation of magical realism in her debut novel She Would Be King. In her memoir, the allegories are cheap. I don't know what happened. If I had to chose I'd definitely say read her debut novel, her memoir can be skipped. You won't miss much. She might have written it too early in her (writing) career. Had she given herself more time, I'm sure she could've pin-pointed and work through what she precisely wanted to say. Now, it feels all over the place.
In The Dragons, the Giant, the Women (2020), Wayétu Moore details growing up in Liberia during its first civil war (1989-1997), escaping the war, and building a new life in the United States. Even though The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is one of the few books that made me cry this year (– you have to have a heart of stone if you don't cry at that fairy tale family reunion where no one was harmed! –), it's one that didn't really stick with me, and one that, structurally speaking, has too many issues. It reads more like a first draft than a finished product tbh, which is such a shame!
This book begins on an April day in Caldwell, Liberia. It is Wayétu's fifth birthday. She's at home with her father, her siblings, her grandparents, and the family’s domestic servant, Torma. Her father, Gus, talks with family friends about the war. He dismisses his friends' concern that the rebels may soon approach, even though his missionary neighbors from China soon leave out of fear of danger. Mam, Gus's wife and the children's mother, is away in the US. Wayétu longs for her mother and wonders if Mam thinks of her often too.
One day, a neighbor bangs on the door at the Moore home, warning them that the rebels are approaching. The family flees at once to the forest. They make their way to a school in Monrovia where many Liberians seek shelter. However, they leave ETMI because Ol' Ma suspects that soldiers—or rebels disguised as soldiers—are kidnapping young girls after a mother wakes to find that her own daughter is missing. They trek through the country, sleeping in abandoned homes during the day and walking by night.
Ol' Ma thinks they ought to travel to Lai—the hometown of the Vai people. They make it across the border to Junde despite having to cross three checkpoints—including one where rebels nearly kill Gus—and take a canoe to the small village. After a while, a young female rebel soldier arrives and tells Gus that Mam has arrived to save him and the girls.
The narrative then shifts to Wayétu's current life in Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a freelance writer and consultant. She's recovering from the end of a two-year relationship and sees a therapist who prompts her to explore her history of loss. In doing so, Wayétu thinks less about her war experiences in Liberia and more about her years as a refugee in Stratford, Connecticut, where she spent her early childhood, and Spring, Texas, where she lived from age eight until she started college. She recalls her early experiences with racism and colorism. She also thinks about the isolation she felt due to being African and how, from childhood, she's had recurring dreams about Satta—the young woman who rescued her, her father, and her sisters.
Wayétu returns to Liberia to look for Satta. Unable to find her, Wayétu admits to herself that she actually came to adress her mother. Finally, she asks her mother why she left the family. Here, the narrative shifts again and Moore makes her mother the narrator of her own story.
Mam tells of how, as the civil war breaks out in Liberia, she's living in New York and attending graduate school at Columbia University. Fearing for the lives of her husband and children, she uses her student visa to help get them out. Upon landing in Libera, Mam learns of rebels who are willing to help people rescue their families in exchange for a fee. Mam decides to enlist the help of a young rebel girl named Satta, who is able to successfully reunite the family. Moore ends her memoir by noting that many people have stories of surviving war, and that not all of them are bad, some have a happy ending. Hers is one such story.
Even though the topic of Moore's memoir is interesting – the First Liberian Civil War and building a new life in the States – I feel like she kind of beat around the bush and we as readers don't learn anything. It's all quite superficially told. Moore's rendition of the Liberian Civil War pales in comparison to Mukasonga's rendition of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in her memoir, Inyenzi ou les cafards ("Cockroaches"). Moore doesn't tell us any facts, she's also not big on describing events or providing context for anything. To me, it felt like she didn't quite know what she wanted to say with this memoir.
My biggest gripe with The Dragons, the Giant, the Women are the narrative jumps. We jump from Moore's childhood to her counselling sessions as an adult to a weird final chapter written from her mother's point of view; especially that last chapter didn't work for me at all. It felt intrusive and inauthentic. What made Moore think that she could write in the name and from the perspective of her mother? It didn't work at all.
The incorporation of magical realism and folk tales, like the one of the dragon Hawa Undu, which Moore uses as an allegory for the president of Liberia, felt hollow and out of place, especially in comparison to her brilliant incorporation of magical realism in her debut novel She Would Be King. In her memoir, the allegories are cheap. I don't know what happened. If I had to chose I'd definitely say read her debut novel, her memoir can be skipped. You won't miss much. She might have written it too early in her (writing) career. Had she given herself more time, I'm sure she could've pin-pointed and work through what she precisely wanted to say. Now, it feels all over the place.
July 16, 2020
Nope, this was not for me. I didn't like the writing & found the structure rather messy. And it often felt as if the author didn't quite know what she wanted to say.
September 5, 2020
‘The Dragons, the Giant, the Women’ by Wayétu Moor is a memoir of the author’s escape from Liberia’s first terrible civil war of “dragons” - Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson - and about her life as a recovering immigrant in a racialized America. She has written a literary autobiography, so it isn’t a straightforwardly written story of remembrance but rather one of short-story-like, lyrical sketches. It’s structure is more like a literary novel with a timeline that jumps forward and back in time.
The book is an amazing history of courage by both Wayétu’s parents and a teenage soldier woman who acted as a guide. The first narrator is the author, in a first-person voice as a little girl. She then jumps to her adult life as a college student in New York City. One part of the book is a third-person narration by Mam of what Mam, Wayétu’s mother, did to rescue her husband and children. Wayétu has a journey as well - one of coming to terms with her sorrow for losing the Liberia of her childhood and growing up as a foreigner in America.
In 1990 the main Liberian city of Monrovia was invaded by Prince Johnson. Wayétu was five years old when she and her sisters, three-year-old K and Wi, six years old, went on a forced march on foot for three weeks through dangerous African country roads trying to avoid murderous teen soldiers high on drugs. She couldn’t understand what was happening, and her father protected her with gentle lies of misdirection. She was with her grandmother, Ol’ Ma, and her father, “the Giant”. They were escaping their house and the war in Monrovia, hoping to get to a Vai tribal village called Lai, Ol Ma’s original home before she married Ol’ Pa. Mam, their mother, was in America attending university.
The walkathon journey was a nightmare for the author, and she needed to enter therapy for treatment of the nightmares. Her parents returned to Liberia after staying for a time in Texas, while Wayétu, an Americanized immigrant who was strange to both Black and White Americans, yearned to feel at home somewhere again as she did as a child in Liberia. She returns to Liberia to see her parents and to try to find the guide who had helped them.
The book is safe to read for sensitive readers. She does not go into the politics or wars of Liberia. Those of you who are curious to read more, I have a Wikipedia link below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_L...
Since I remember reading the news stories of the Liberian civil wars in American newspapers when the wars were happening, I can add the information that these Liberian Dragon warlords were total monsters. No age was too young or human too weak to not be a toy for torture and abuse. Children fought in the armies of the warlords as soldiers. These children were kidnapped from the arms of village families and forced to do battle, murders and rapes while drunk or high. The author obviously does not want this story to be the one of her memoir.
The author’s choosing to intentionally lean into a stylistically poetic, MFA-schooled literary version of her history did not engage me. However, I certainly wish her all the best. The sufferings of Liberians were enormous during those decades from which they have yet to recover.
The book is an amazing history of courage by both Wayétu’s parents and a teenage soldier woman who acted as a guide. The first narrator is the author, in a first-person voice as a little girl. She then jumps to her adult life as a college student in New York City. One part of the book is a third-person narration by Mam of what Mam, Wayétu’s mother, did to rescue her husband and children. Wayétu has a journey as well - one of coming to terms with her sorrow for losing the Liberia of her childhood and growing up as a foreigner in America.
In 1990 the main Liberian city of Monrovia was invaded by Prince Johnson. Wayétu was five years old when she and her sisters, three-year-old K and Wi, six years old, went on a forced march on foot for three weeks through dangerous African country roads trying to avoid murderous teen soldiers high on drugs. She couldn’t understand what was happening, and her father protected her with gentle lies of misdirection. She was with her grandmother, Ol’ Ma, and her father, “the Giant”. They were escaping their house and the war in Monrovia, hoping to get to a Vai tribal village called Lai, Ol Ma’s original home before she married Ol’ Pa. Mam, their mother, was in America attending university.
The walkathon journey was a nightmare for the author, and she needed to enter therapy for treatment of the nightmares. Her parents returned to Liberia after staying for a time in Texas, while Wayétu, an Americanized immigrant who was strange to both Black and White Americans, yearned to feel at home somewhere again as she did as a child in Liberia. She returns to Liberia to see her parents and to try to find the guide who had helped them.
The book is safe to read for sensitive readers. She does not go into the politics or wars of Liberia. Those of you who are curious to read more, I have a Wikipedia link below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_L...
Since I remember reading the news stories of the Liberian civil wars in American newspapers when the wars were happening, I can add the information that these Liberian Dragon warlords were total monsters. No age was too young or human too weak to not be a toy for torture and abuse. Children fought in the armies of the warlords as soldiers. These children were kidnapped from the arms of village families and forced to do battle, murders and rapes while drunk or high. The author obviously does not want this story to be the one of her memoir.
The author’s choosing to intentionally lean into a stylistically poetic, MFA-schooled literary version of her history did not engage me. However, I certainly wish her all the best. The sufferings of Liberians were enormous during those decades from which they have yet to recover.
February 4, 2022
"Mia nonna dice che le storie migliori non sempre finiscono bene, ma la felicità trova comunque il modo di arrivare.
Dice che alcune storie devono curvarsi molte volte come il filo del pescatore.
Alcune storie fanno ridere i bambini.
Alcune storie fanno piangere i nonni.
Per altre c'è bisogno di tempo prima che i griot possano raccontarle, ma come le prugne lasciate troppo lungo al sole, anche loro hanno un sapore dolcissimo."
Dice che alcune storie devono curvarsi molte volte come il filo del pescatore.
Alcune storie fanno ridere i bambini.
Alcune storie fanno piangere i nonni.
Per altre c'è bisogno di tempo prima che i griot possano raccontarle, ma come le prugne lasciate troppo lungo al sole, anche loro hanno un sapore dolcissimo."
June 7, 2021
Actual Rating: 4.9 stars
There is a weight that builds on shoulders when one leaves home. The longer a person stays away, the heavier the burden of displacement.
Reduced to being refugees because of the Liberian civil war, the well-to-do Moore family is displaced and living under the fear of being killed by the rebel forces. The book is about their escape to safety.
A very relevant book in today's times that talks about the tension surrounding the refugee crisis.
The reason why it is not full 5 ⭐ is simply because of the chronological order of the book that can confuse readers or break the intense chain.
Read for the Quarterfinals of the Booktube Prize 2021, this one made it to the Semifinals.
Ranking - 2nd (out of 6 books)
(For more insight, please watch the video on my YT channel)
There is a weight that builds on shoulders when one leaves home. The longer a person stays away, the heavier the burden of displacement.
Reduced to being refugees because of the Liberian civil war, the well-to-do Moore family is displaced and living under the fear of being killed by the rebel forces. The book is about their escape to safety.
A very relevant book in today's times that talks about the tension surrounding the refugee crisis.
The reason why it is not full 5 ⭐ is simply because of the chronological order of the book that can confuse readers or break the intense chain.
Read for the Quarterfinals of the Booktube Prize 2021, this one made it to the Semifinals.
Ranking - 2nd (out of 6 books)
(For more insight, please watch the video on my YT channel)
December 16, 2022
A beautiful and moving memoir of a childhood disrupted by the first Liberian civil war. I loved Moore’s child’s-eye view of the war, her responses to American racism, and her decision to write both her own and her mother’s experiences in the first person. A valuable contribution to our understanding of the refugee experience, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for memoir and autobiography.
September 7, 2021
A memoir I was interested to read as it had been one of the books on last year's BookTube prize list that made it to the final rounds.
It is the story of a young girl's early life told basically in three parts. The Dragons--from a child's viewpoint as her family is fleeing the civil war in Liberia, The Giant--her immigration to the U.S. with her family and living in Texas and the Women--recounting her return to Liberia and the search for a woman who was instrumental in helping her family flee Liberia.
Over all I really found this informative about this young woman's journey. I know little of the Ivory Coast of Africa so it did lead me to research more about the conflict in Liberia and look at lots of pictures of this part of the world. The writing was good though in audio the early children view point got annoying at times with much whining about the walk and hardships. My favorite part was the later chapters of the book especially the end which the author does a great job of giving an upward/positive spin.
I will say I found the structure a little odd for a memoir as the author changes point of view at times and becomes her mother or father, speaking not OF them but AS them. I did not have the print book so perhaps the print gave some visual indication in change of type that the author was speaking as a different family member?
So in all I have mixed feelings about the book. 3.5 stars. The structure and jumps in time made for a confusing read at times. Not a great audio might be better in print. Best part was learning more about this part of the world.
It is the story of a young girl's early life told basically in three parts. The Dragons--from a child's viewpoint as her family is fleeing the civil war in Liberia, The Giant--her immigration to the U.S. with her family and living in Texas and the Women--recounting her return to Liberia and the search for a woman who was instrumental in helping her family flee Liberia.
Over all I really found this informative about this young woman's journey. I know little of the Ivory Coast of Africa so it did lead me to research more about the conflict in Liberia and look at lots of pictures of this part of the world. The writing was good though in audio the early children view point got annoying at times with much whining about the walk and hardships. My favorite part was the later chapters of the book especially the end which the author does a great job of giving an upward/positive spin.
I will say I found the structure a little odd for a memoir as the author changes point of view at times and becomes her mother or father, speaking not OF them but AS them. I did not have the print book so perhaps the print gave some visual indication in change of type that the author was speaking as a different family member?
So in all I have mixed feelings about the book. 3.5 stars. The structure and jumps in time made for a confusing read at times. Not a great audio might be better in print. Best part was learning more about this part of the world.
March 23, 2021
3.5 rounded up
A page-turner of a memoir recounting the author's childhood in Liberia, where a civil war broke out in 1989 when she was 4 years old. Forced to escape her home in Monrovia with her father and two young siblings, they fled to the remote countryside to hide with relatives. Her mother was in the US studying at Columbia on a Fulbright scholarship, and made the difficult (although not for her) choice to return to Africa, travelling to neighbouring Sierra Leone to recruit an intermediary to enter Liberia to search for her family. We also learn about Moore's experiences in the US, where she grew up in Houston and went on to live in NYC as an adult.
I found this to be a lyrical and moving account of a child's experiences of war. I thought the inclusion of the latter chapters from her mother's first person perspective worked well too in concluding the story. Recommended.
Thank you Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
A page-turner of a memoir recounting the author's childhood in Liberia, where a civil war broke out in 1989 when she was 4 years old. Forced to escape her home in Monrovia with her father and two young siblings, they fled to the remote countryside to hide with relatives. Her mother was in the US studying at Columbia on a Fulbright scholarship, and made the difficult (although not for her) choice to return to Africa, travelling to neighbouring Sierra Leone to recruit an intermediary to enter Liberia to search for her family. We also learn about Moore's experiences in the US, where she grew up in Houston and went on to live in NYC as an adult.
I found this to be a lyrical and moving account of a child's experiences of war. I thought the inclusion of the latter chapters from her mother's first person perspective worked well too in concluding the story. Recommended.
Thank you Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
June 30, 2023
Wayétu Moore’s memoir of growing up in Liberia while her mother was studying abroad, and her subsequent flight with her family during the First Liberian Civil War, ultimately arriving in America. She relates details of her escape from a war zone and adjustment to American culture, where she is viewed through a racial lens, contrary to her experience in Africa. She also tells her mother’s story, which helps clarify some of the details that a small child would not have understood. She discusses factors that led to wars in Liberia, but it is mostly a personal story of family love and the difficulties she faced. It is structured in an unusual way, and I found it a bit jumbled in places, as it tells the same story of leaving Liberia from two different perspectives. This memoir seems a way for the author to process the traumas of her childhood. It does not flow as well as I typically prefer, but it conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies migration due to war. I always appreciate learning about personal experiences around the world.
May 31, 2020
I read She Would Be King at the start of the year and upon finishing it I immediately wanted to learn more about Wayetu Moore and her inspiration. When I learned that SWBK was partially inspired by Moore’s own experience fleeing Liberia during the civil war and that she had a memoir coming out surrounding these events I couldn’t wait to read it.
The Dragons, The Giant , The Women is an incredible memoir and a beautiful display of storytelling. Moore possesses the unique ability to write nonfiction in a way that reads like fiction and is immediately accessible to the reader. What I loved most about this memoir is the way that Moore writes from the perspective of herself at the age she experienced these events. Because of this there is a childlike wonder and innocence to the recounting which serves to further highlight the devastations of war.
This memoir also addresses the topics of the strength of familia love, the personal & external forces affecting migrants and refugees, the experience of integrating into a new culture, the lasting effects of trauma, and the experience of being a Black women in a country that doesn’t value you. All of this was addressed with such poise and care. I highly recommend this memoir for all these reasons and many more.
The Dragons, The Giant , The Women is an incredible memoir and a beautiful display of storytelling. Moore possesses the unique ability to write nonfiction in a way that reads like fiction and is immediately accessible to the reader. What I loved most about this memoir is the way that Moore writes from the perspective of herself at the age she experienced these events. Because of this there is a childlike wonder and innocence to the recounting which serves to further highlight the devastations of war.
This memoir also addresses the topics of the strength of familia love, the personal & external forces affecting migrants and refugees, the experience of integrating into a new culture, the lasting effects of trauma, and the experience of being a Black women in a country that doesn’t value you. All of this was addressed with such poise and care. I highly recommend this memoir for all these reasons and many more.
August 11, 2021
This was so well done and unlike any memoir I've ever read. It is written by an African person, and I love reading memoirs by African writers because I love learning about the history of different countries and the real life effect on children and families. This memoir also explored immigration to the US, and living away from your family (her mother's POV).
The inclusion of her mother's POV was also such a masterstroke.
The inclusion of her mother's POV was also such a masterstroke.
February 2, 2022
“La sofferenza fa parte della storia di tutti. Ci saranno stagioni delle piogge e stagioni aride troppo lunghe da sopportare, dove i guai si accumuleranno come carbone per ridurti in cenere. Ma così come la sofferenza si annida in questa stagioni, anche la felicità lo fa, malgrado sia lieve, malgrado sia effimera.”
I draghi, il gigante, le donne racconta la storia dell'autrice, Wayétu Moore. Quando aveva appena 5 anni, insieme alle due sorelle, al padre e alla nonna, Tutu è costretta ad abbandonare la sua casa e a fuggire. In Liberia scoppia una sanguinosa guerra civile che durerà per 14 anni e che causerà la morte di migliaia di persone. Insieme ad una parte della sua famiglia, Tutu viaggia per la Liberia semi occupata dai ribelli, alla ricerca di un posto sicuro dove nascondersi e aspettare che tutto sia finito. Per proteggere in parte le bambine dall'orrore che le circonda, il padre e la nonna si servono di favole, di draghi ed eroi, di giganti e principi. Allo scoppio del conflitto la madre di Tutu, Mam, è in America con una borsa di studio e non può far altro che assistere da lontano alle atrocità che stanno distruggendo il suo paese e la sua famiglia.
Il racconto è diviso in tre parti che raccontano prima la guerra vista dagli occhi della piccola Tutu, poi la vita da adulta di Wayétu in America e la sua lotta per affermare la sua identità e infine il racconto della madre e il disperato tentativo di salvare la sua famiglia. Questo memoir, e di riflesso la storia che racconta, è costantemente sospeso tra una realtà brutale e una fantasia che cerca di camuffarne gli aspetti più scabrosi. L'autrice è stata molto brava nel raccontare una storia drammatica e dolorosa con delicatezza e senza mai cadere nell'eccessivo vittimismo. Le tre parti in cui il libro è diviso scandiscono una certa crescita, una maturazione che deve aver coinvolto la stessa Wayétu.
La prima e l'ultima parte sono dedicate alla guerra, ad una Liberia distrutta in cui Tutu e la sua famiglia sono in fuga mentre Mam è in America impotente. Bellissimo uno dei capitoli iniziali in cui la piccola Tutu racconta la fuga e la conseguente perdita dell'innocenza.
"le acque fangose adesso erano la mia vasca il mio battesimo in un istante superata l'infanzia superata l'innocenza superate le cose che le nuvole non facevano mai e i miei piedi hanno perso la terra sotto di me così le ginocchia adesso correvano insieme a papà e l'acqua adesso mi scorreva sul viso e il merletto sull'orlo del vestito è rimasto da qualche parte dietro di me con le mie scarpe e il carro armato e la mia infanzia e gli spari che non la smettevano ma venivano verso di me sotto i soli a picco arancioni e le nuvole che non dicevano altro che pioggia."
Niente punteggiatura, niente pause, un fiume di parole che ci catapulta nella mente di Tutu che all'improvviso smette di essere bambina.
Ancora più interessante è però la parte centrale del memoir, in cui a prendere parola è una Wayétu ormai adulta che vive in America. In questa sezione i temi toccati dall'autrice sono quanto mai attuali; si parla di razzismo, di cosa significhi essere una donna nera in America, di pregiudizio e di molto altro ancora. Mi ha ricordato in parte Americanah di Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, anche in quel romanzo Ifimelu, la protagonista, si fa le stesse domande di Wayétu. Nonostante questa parte del romanzo sia la più breve, a mio parere è la più incisiva, quella in cui vengono esplorati temi molto interessanti. Serve anche a fare da ponte tra la prima parte in cui a predominare è una sorta di realismo magico e l'ultima in cui a chiudere il cerchio troviamo Mam.
Le donne del titolo, Tutu, Mam, la nonna, la ribelle Satta, sono protagoniste indiscusse di questo memoir. Perno centrale sono anche le storie, quelle che la nonna racconta alle sue nipotine per proteggerle dagli orrori della guerra, le storie che Mam spedisce dall'America che parlano di un mondo sconosciuto, le storie che la stessa Wayétu poi decide di raccontare. Le storie che ci aiutano a guarire, a scendere a patti con il mondo che ci circonda e con quello che ci succede, le storie che ci restituiscono identità e potere, le storie che ci riportano a casa.
I draghi, il gigante, le donne racconta la storia dell'autrice, Wayétu Moore. Quando aveva appena 5 anni, insieme alle due sorelle, al padre e alla nonna, Tutu è costretta ad abbandonare la sua casa e a fuggire. In Liberia scoppia una sanguinosa guerra civile che durerà per 14 anni e che causerà la morte di migliaia di persone. Insieme ad una parte della sua famiglia, Tutu viaggia per la Liberia semi occupata dai ribelli, alla ricerca di un posto sicuro dove nascondersi e aspettare che tutto sia finito. Per proteggere in parte le bambine dall'orrore che le circonda, il padre e la nonna si servono di favole, di draghi ed eroi, di giganti e principi. Allo scoppio del conflitto la madre di Tutu, Mam, è in America con una borsa di studio e non può far altro che assistere da lontano alle atrocità che stanno distruggendo il suo paese e la sua famiglia.
Il racconto è diviso in tre parti che raccontano prima la guerra vista dagli occhi della piccola Tutu, poi la vita da adulta di Wayétu in America e la sua lotta per affermare la sua identità e infine il racconto della madre e il disperato tentativo di salvare la sua famiglia. Questo memoir, e di riflesso la storia che racconta, è costantemente sospeso tra una realtà brutale e una fantasia che cerca di camuffarne gli aspetti più scabrosi. L'autrice è stata molto brava nel raccontare una storia drammatica e dolorosa con delicatezza e senza mai cadere nell'eccessivo vittimismo. Le tre parti in cui il libro è diviso scandiscono una certa crescita, una maturazione che deve aver coinvolto la stessa Wayétu.
La prima e l'ultima parte sono dedicate alla guerra, ad una Liberia distrutta in cui Tutu e la sua famiglia sono in fuga mentre Mam è in America impotente. Bellissimo uno dei capitoli iniziali in cui la piccola Tutu racconta la fuga e la conseguente perdita dell'innocenza.
"le acque fangose adesso erano la mia vasca il mio battesimo in un istante superata l'infanzia superata l'innocenza superate le cose che le nuvole non facevano mai e i miei piedi hanno perso la terra sotto di me così le ginocchia adesso correvano insieme a papà e l'acqua adesso mi scorreva sul viso e il merletto sull'orlo del vestito è rimasto da qualche parte dietro di me con le mie scarpe e il carro armato e la mia infanzia e gli spari che non la smettevano ma venivano verso di me sotto i soli a picco arancioni e le nuvole che non dicevano altro che pioggia."
Niente punteggiatura, niente pause, un fiume di parole che ci catapulta nella mente di Tutu che all'improvviso smette di essere bambina.
Ancora più interessante è però la parte centrale del memoir, in cui a prendere parola è una Wayétu ormai adulta che vive in America. In questa sezione i temi toccati dall'autrice sono quanto mai attuali; si parla di razzismo, di cosa significhi essere una donna nera in America, di pregiudizio e di molto altro ancora. Mi ha ricordato in parte Americanah di Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, anche in quel romanzo Ifimelu, la protagonista, si fa le stesse domande di Wayétu. Nonostante questa parte del romanzo sia la più breve, a mio parere è la più incisiva, quella in cui vengono esplorati temi molto interessanti. Serve anche a fare da ponte tra la prima parte in cui a predominare è una sorta di realismo magico e l'ultima in cui a chiudere il cerchio troviamo Mam.
Le donne del titolo, Tutu, Mam, la nonna, la ribelle Satta, sono protagoniste indiscusse di questo memoir. Perno centrale sono anche le storie, quelle che la nonna racconta alle sue nipotine per proteggerle dagli orrori della guerra, le storie che Mam spedisce dall'America che parlano di un mondo sconosciuto, le storie che la stessa Wayétu poi decide di raccontare. Le storie che ci aiutano a guarire, a scendere a patti con il mondo che ci circonda e con quello che ci succede, le storie che ci restituiscono identità e potere, le storie che ci riportano a casa.
December 6, 2020
This book reminded me a bit of Americanah. Set in Liberia instead of Nigeria, it traces her childhood during the Liberian civil war, coming of age in America, and return to her birth country as an adult.
We learned about tribalism in Liberia. Tutu and her family flee their home on foot during Charles Taylor’s rebel army challenge to President Samuel Doe. This part was different because it was written through a child’s eyes (she was five when this happened).
We also learned once her family escaped how Tutu dealt with racism in America, but this was rather superficially addressed.
By far the best part was the flashback climactic finale how their brave mother Mam was able to engineer a dramatic rescue of her family from wartorn Liberia.
It was not as exquisitely written as Americanah (Chimamanda is a truly gifted writer) and it is a memoir instead of fiction. But West African women authors are awesome.
We learned about tribalism in Liberia. Tutu and her family flee their home on foot during Charles Taylor’s rebel army challenge to President Samuel Doe. This part was different because it was written through a child’s eyes (she was five when this happened).
We also learned once her family escaped how Tutu dealt with racism in America, but this was rather superficially addressed.
By far the best part was the flashback climactic finale how their brave mother Mam was able to engineer a dramatic rescue of her family from wartorn Liberia.
It was not as exquisitely written as Americanah (Chimamanda is a truly gifted writer) and it is a memoir instead of fiction. But West African women authors are awesome.
June 12, 2020
Skin color was king - king above nationality, king above life stories, and, yes, even king above Christ
Moore's memoir is moving, beautiful yet heartbreaking. From Liberian Civil War to immigration to America, we are transported into her life and the author drives us through a journey filled with Liberian culture. I was able to feel the effect of war trauma during Moore's childhood on her adulthood; also the hardships and racism that Moore suffered while trying to blend in the American culture/society and adjust to a new life. Once she was comfortable with her foreign identity, she started to struggle with the Liberian heritage. The subject of race is thoroughly explored in this memoir, as well as themes of war, family strength, resilience, mother-daughter relationship, cultural identity and immigrant's life.
The expressive and lavish language made her experiences so vivid that I could relate on a personal level. In addition, I was absorbed in a way that it felt like I was reading fiction. Read this memoir!
[ I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review ]
Moore's memoir is moving, beautiful yet heartbreaking. From Liberian Civil War to immigration to America, we are transported into her life and the author drives us through a journey filled with Liberian culture. I was able to feel the effect of war trauma during Moore's childhood on her adulthood; also the hardships and racism that Moore suffered while trying to blend in the American culture/society and adjust to a new life. Once she was comfortable with her foreign identity, she started to struggle with the Liberian heritage. The subject of race is thoroughly explored in this memoir, as well as themes of war, family strength, resilience, mother-daughter relationship, cultural identity and immigrant's life.
The expressive and lavish language made her experiences so vivid that I could relate on a personal level. In addition, I was absorbed in a way that it felt like I was reading fiction. Read this memoir!
[ I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review ]
July 4, 2020
4.5 stars
Man... I didn't expect to cry at the end. Women are such essential beings. Liberian women in particular, are a special kind. May you be a Satta, in this world.
*full review on africanbookaddict.com, soon.
Man... I didn't expect to cry at the end. Women are such essential beings. Liberian women in particular, are a special kind. May you be a Satta, in this world.
*full review on africanbookaddict.com, soon.
February 22, 2020
A deeply moving, lovingly crafted, and unique memoir. Moore makes some brilliant creative choices with structure, voice, and point of view.
June 14, 2020
This memoir is not only a compelling story of a young girl fleeing civil war in Liberia, but it is also a work of art. Start with the title, the way young Wayétu, in part due to her father's desire to guard his children's innocence, experienced the war as a fairy tale, complete with dragons, a protective giant, and the thunder of drums as they ran. There is also a breathtaking level of thematic symmetry, both with the theme of running and also with the search for the young rebel girl who helped reunite her family. There is the boldness of risky but, ultimately, perfect choices--the author taking on her mother's voice to narrate a crucial piece of family history; the trust that adventures in dating earned their place in this book as much as war. And then there is the beauty of knowing which moments to capture, which moments to slow. I want so badly to quote the prose used to describe her father's reaction to a photo, but it is worth being surprised by the goosebumps of it. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is an emotional, magical, and revolutionary story of a woman learning to own the fullness of her story, her history, and her power.
August 5, 2021
An ordinary family caught up in a civil war. The author was 5 years old at the time when she had to flee Monrovia with her father, grandmother and sisters (6 and 4 years old). It is a tale of an ordinary family whose lives are completely disrupted. I wonder if my family would be able to survive an event like this which requires them to flee for miles on foot into farmland and jungles dodging guns. Told from her own perspective as well as her mother's who was in the United States at the time and came to find them. Beautifully written, highly recommend.
Want to read
June 3, 2020June 2, 2020: A very happy release day to this! A deeply moving memoir of a black woman immigrant who escapes the Liberian Civil War and builds a life in the United States. Political themes that dip into power of family and love. Hoping to read it soon.
August 1, 2020
Easily one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Moore details her families escape from rebel forces in Liberia and her life in America. So much sadness but also so much strength amongst the Liberian people.
Read
August 13, 2021This is the story of Moore's family in Liberia. Her mother went to the USA to study and while she's there, war breaks out in Liberia. The family endures a harrowing escape from their home village, and then months of hiding in the village of Lai. Moore's mother returns from the USA to smuggle her family across the border into Sierra Leone, with the help of a female rebel soldier. And then it's also the story of Moore's youth, growing up in Texas and making a return visit to Liberia as an adult.
The story's a fascinating one, but it's told out of chronological order, and one part is narrated from her mother's point of view. I found the fractured chronology and the shifting point of view a little jarring, but overall, it's a compelling memoir.
Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the audiobook version. The reader makes the young girls so incredibly whiny that one could lose sympathy for their plight. I abandoned the audio relatively early on and finished with text alone.
The story's a fascinating one, but it's told out of chronological order, and one part is narrated from her mother's point of view. I found the fractured chronology and the shifting point of view a little jarring, but overall, it's a compelling memoir.
Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the audiobook version. The reader makes the young girls so incredibly whiny that one could lose sympathy for their plight. I abandoned the audio relatively early on and finished with text alone.
September 14, 2021
This was so beautiful 😭😭 highly recommend
June 9, 2020
But there were things I went into the world not knowing. We did not talk about what to do when a boy was unkind, in words or actions, breaking my heart. I was lousy in the ways of healing. Mam had one true love in a country of women like her, whose sun took turns resting on their deep, dark skin. My true loves in our new country, by either inheritance or indoctrination, were taught that black women were the least among them. Loving me was an act of resistance, though many. did not know it. And Mam could not understand this feeling, the heaviness of it, to be loved as resistance, as an exception to a rule. To fight to be seen in love throughout the resistance. This was my new country.
I expected a moving story but was utterly blown away by the stunning prose and rich descriptive detail. Truly a beautiful book through and through.
Memoirs are my favorite genre to read but also the hardest to review. Wayétu Moore's life, especially her early childhood, is as fascinating as it is appalling. Surrounded at such at young age by violence and upheaval and so little capacity to comprehend it. The writing structure was often malleable, shifting from part to part and bending to assist the themes. This was particularly effective in instilling the feelings of urgency and confusion in the reader. The author brilliantly executes the perspective of a small child adrift in a sea of violence. With allusion to Liberian folktales we can see how she as a child clung to familiar stories as a way to explain and understand her own new tumultuous position. I loved the inclusion of folktale in this memoir, in part because the folktales were new to me as a reader but also that it created a window through which you can see her own awe and terror at the world.
Similarly, the parts of the book about her adulthood are written with honesty and frankness but also with the disorientation of an adult still grappling with a traumatic past and a present that continues to wound. Wayétu Moore, as a black woman and an immigrant to the United States gave me a perspective I have not often heard and was certainly educational to me, if also painful to hear how her experience has been so disparate from my own.
On top of the author's use of structure, the prose throughout the entire book is just beautiful. The descriptions are sensory and unconventional, often combing things in metaphor I would never have associated but were nonetheless perfect for created a visceral reading experience. Of course, the story is worth reading in its own right. Wayétu has an incredible story to tell. One of family, loss, prejudice, love and war, in one's country and also within oneself. The Dragons, The Giant, The Women is a story of leaving, finding and returning home. An absolutely stunning book!
Thank you to the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.
April 20, 2024
"The Dragons, the Giant, the Women" by Wayetu Moore is the April selection for my TTN Book Club. I, honestly, wasn't excited about this selection. However, wow, this was powerful, educational, and moving.
Wayetu's Moore's memoir moves across time periods from the 1980’s as the first civil war in Liberia rages and her family must flee, to her life in Texas and New York City, back to her mother's return Liberia in 1990, and finally to Wayetu's eventual return to Liberia. Much of the story is told from Tutu's viewpoint, but one section, detailing the family's escape from Liberia, is told from Mam's (her mother's) perspective.
Takeaways:
1. I knew little of the history of Liberia before reading the memoir. I still know very little - the history of the country's last several decades is complex. The memoir raised my awareness and made me ask questions and do some research.
2. The title, "The Dragons, the Giant, and the Women," could be fodder for an entire discussion - who are the dragons (Hawa Undu - see p. 95 - the cashier on p. 126 - Charles Taylor), the giant (Papa/August Moore), and the women (Mam, Ol' Ma) referred to here - and what are the literal, metaphorical, and mythological aspects of the title? An excellent, thought-provoking title!
- p. 119 - "I thought of Mam in that moment. She had taught me many things...she was more than I deserved. She taught me how to cook, how to write, my posture, how to care for my home, how to love God, how to read. She taught me politeness, creativity, how to write a letter, especially to those who had offended me. How to pray, how to fold clothes, how to love my sisters, how to love my brothers, how to love myself. She taught me about woman - how to be one, how to know them, how to befriend them, how to give advice and love them, and how some would betray me because they saw kindness as a weakness, and at the first sign if such brutality I should walk away, for such women did not even love themselves. That not all those who chose to be around me liked me. That some knew too well how to pretend, and they would raise daughters with these doctrines, so I should remember her words and...some would raise sons they did not want to let go of, and would handle them like marionettes, and I should be careful never to sit in the audience os such a show for too long."
- p. 245 - "The watchfulness of the rebels burdened him, I could tell, but Papa had never let me down before. The months had withered his spirit, but he was still a giant, our giant, with hands strong enough to armor my ears when the drums echoed loudly in the night."
3. The language here is absolutely stunning! However, it is complex in that Moore goes back and forth in time (the book is arranged by seasons and covers the years from approximately 1990, when Moore was 5 years old and the Liberian Civil War had begun, to her being raised in Texas, to her eventual return to Liberia to visit her parents ), changes narrators (Moore narrates most of the story as both a child and as an adult, and one section of the book is told from her mother's point of view), and uses a variety of writing styles throughout (see chapter 6, for instance, which is written as one, long, run-on sentence to capture Moore's frantic thoughts).
- p. 111 - "And his eyes, once a whisper of 'It will be okay' or 'Papa is right here' or another blend of words that persuaded our peace of mind, now seemed to say 'We are lost' and 'They do not want us me here but we must stay' and 'Papa is gone. I am sorry.'"
4. "The Dragons, the Giant, the Women" is packed solid with deep, heady thematic material. It helped me to see some things and understand them in a way that I had not previously.
- the roles of men and women in Liberia and in the United States - p. 63 - "And those men at the edge of the forest, those princes and rebels who wished to kill Hawa Undu. Why all this palaver over a hiding dragon? Why hadn't they just asked a woman, one like Mam, one of those women who could do anything, and go anywhere, to just go inside the forest and talk to Hawa Undu in a nice voice? To make him a feast and pepper his palm butter with those spices Mam used and feed him pork and dry fish like a king? And she would not fight him. She would hold Hawa Undu's hand and lead him outside." - p. 139 "Men like him were the men I grew up with. All-American and well meaning, painstakingly oblivious of their privilege..." - p. 176 - "Ol' Ma says it takes a special man, a good man, to give his wife a blessing to leave him. That is what Gus did for me...Ol' Ma said that these men special men are clever and confident, so confident that they trust their choice of women, and they would never choose women who would not return to them." - pp. 181-2 "...the only thing that made me stay was wanting my daughters to know that they could go after anything they wanted, that they could fly too." - p. 200 - "These things were reminders of my smallness and the many ways life functioned outside my control; but there were coincidences that gave me a glimpse, though I was small, of just how powerful I could be. And I wanted to tell my daughters this. I wanted to teach them thier power and remind them of it every day..."
- the role that skin color and racism play in both cultures - the conflict between "American" blacks and "African" immigrants was something I observed many times while an educator - I also had many students who struggled between being at home where the family sought to preserve its language, culture, etc. and being at school and trying to fit in by learning English and looking like their fellow students - they worked hard to straddle two worlds - p. 142-3 - "'They make you not want your mother to sound African in school now, Then? That's what we sending you to school for?...I am African. And so are you!...Look at me...Are you ashamed of me?...Because if you're ashamed of me, then you're ashamed of yourself....You are African..Don't let them make you shame, yeh? You are African.'".- p. 120 - "...I could be beautiful in a place and still not enough, not because of who I was or anything I had done, but because of something as simple, and somehow grand in this new place, as the color of my skin." * p. 124 "...in this new place that Mam and Papa had told us was home, skin color was king - king above nationality, king above life stories, and, yes, even king above Christ." - p. 136 - "'...I just...I don't see color.'" - p. 137 - "...I was black in this kingdom where black was criminal, a stain, a deformity." - p. 146 - "Liberia lived with me every night, in my dreams, that I wear it on my skin..." - p. 147 - "'You're African, not really American black. So why do you take all of this race stuff so seriously?'"
- the costs and consequences of war - p. 73 - "During wartime, a man will not only find the person he hates to kill him, but he will find and kill anyone whom he thinks the person he hates loves or knows or once did business with." - p. 115 - "'If the war had not happened...'" - trauma - p. 118 - "'I didn't experience trauma in the way you're understanding it....I believe I had a happy childhood...Nothing horrible happened to me...I think I was lucky...'" (such a powerful, complex statement) - p. 155 -"'Who ruins the thing they are fighting for?'" - p. 218-9 - "'Not all fighters are bad. They all look bad...Most fighters, they will do bad things, but not all of them are bad. Do you understand? Some of these rebels them they get forced dto fight, they have no choice, but they stay good. You understand what I am saying?'"
- religion
- education
- love - p. 104 - "The Ol' Mas did not tell us that you could not throw away love once it was finished. That it would remain on us like blackened scars, underneath blouses in those places only we could see. That we would reach a point where it, once solid, would melt in our hands and we would never fully wash off its residue; and that some love, the truest love, also the most dangerous, could disfigure our core." - p. 204-5 - "This was the other side of love. Love gone is painful...But love almost gone - the lurking threat of loss - that was a daily torture, death realized every morning. And I did not know which was worse...Such is the danger of deep love, however beautiful. Dying lingers close behind." - p. 247 - "There was love, then there was what he had with Mam; his wildflower, his siren, Orpheus now in the depths, the hell of war, returned for her true loves."
- death and loss - p. 93 - "I had heard of death in many forms. The kind where spirits joined ancestors and lingered around us. The kind where a person went to paradise and waited for God in heaven to call them up. The kind where the soul is taken by God to a life after one on earth. None of these seemed to be ways of bringing his body back, of seeing him walk through the clearing with all of us on his mind and a smile so we would know. My Ol' Pa was gone. I would never see his body again." - p. 160 - "And while I cried, no matter how hard I cried, when she called my name I stopped, at once, because she said I seemed to know that tears were a way of letting the world know that the healing, the work, had already been done." - p. 162 - "'Death is not the end,' I thought to myself."
- mothers
- fathers
* - connections - p. 122 - "...everything is linked to everything else. What we have done to what we are doing, from where we've come to where we're going, our five-year-old actions to this morning's breakfast."
- stereotypes - p. 184 - "The presenter clicked a remote and a picture of a young child, no more that four years old, black, dirty, naked...faded onto the screen. He showed several other pictures of children, similar to the first, appearing hungry, sad, some crying, all of them staring directly into the camera. He spoke of how difficult it was for him to find a single person who could read or write. At that point I started to sweat. He spoke of the lack of compassion among fathers, Liberian fathers, and what it said of the African men he had been around...my head pounded...my body both hot and cold. Where was my garden in these pictures? Where was my husband and men like him? Where were my daughters?"
* story - p. 248 - "My Ol' Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow...There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But to remember among those who were lsot, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too."
I couldn't put this one down. Highly recommended!
Wayetu's Moore's memoir moves across time periods from the 1980’s as the first civil war in Liberia rages and her family must flee, to her life in Texas and New York City, back to her mother's return Liberia in 1990, and finally to Wayetu's eventual return to Liberia. Much of the story is told from Tutu's viewpoint, but one section, detailing the family's escape from Liberia, is told from Mam's (her mother's) perspective.
Takeaways:
1. I knew little of the history of Liberia before reading the memoir. I still know very little - the history of the country's last several decades is complex. The memoir raised my awareness and made me ask questions and do some research.
2. The title, "The Dragons, the Giant, and the Women," could be fodder for an entire discussion - who are the dragons (Hawa Undu - see p. 95 - the cashier on p. 126 - Charles Taylor), the giant (Papa/August Moore), and the women (Mam, Ol' Ma) referred to here - and what are the literal, metaphorical, and mythological aspects of the title? An excellent, thought-provoking title!
- p. 119 - "I thought of Mam in that moment. She had taught me many things...she was more than I deserved. She taught me how to cook, how to write, my posture, how to care for my home, how to love God, how to read. She taught me politeness, creativity, how to write a letter, especially to those who had offended me. How to pray, how to fold clothes, how to love my sisters, how to love my brothers, how to love myself. She taught me about woman - how to be one, how to know them, how to befriend them, how to give advice and love them, and how some would betray me because they saw kindness as a weakness, and at the first sign if such brutality I should walk away, for such women did not even love themselves. That not all those who chose to be around me liked me. That some knew too well how to pretend, and they would raise daughters with these doctrines, so I should remember her words and...some would raise sons they did not want to let go of, and would handle them like marionettes, and I should be careful never to sit in the audience os such a show for too long."
- p. 245 - "The watchfulness of the rebels burdened him, I could tell, but Papa had never let me down before. The months had withered his spirit, but he was still a giant, our giant, with hands strong enough to armor my ears when the drums echoed loudly in the night."
3. The language here is absolutely stunning! However, it is complex in that Moore goes back and forth in time (the book is arranged by seasons and covers the years from approximately 1990, when Moore was 5 years old and the Liberian Civil War had begun, to her being raised in Texas, to her eventual return to Liberia to visit her parents ), changes narrators (Moore narrates most of the story as both a child and as an adult, and one section of the book is told from her mother's point of view), and uses a variety of writing styles throughout (see chapter 6, for instance, which is written as one, long, run-on sentence to capture Moore's frantic thoughts).
- p. 111 - "And his eyes, once a whisper of 'It will be okay' or 'Papa is right here' or another blend of words that persuaded our peace of mind, now seemed to say 'We are lost' and 'They do not want us me here but we must stay' and 'Papa is gone. I am sorry.'"
4. "The Dragons, the Giant, the Women" is packed solid with deep, heady thematic material. It helped me to see some things and understand them in a way that I had not previously.
- the roles of men and women in Liberia and in the United States - p. 63 - "And those men at the edge of the forest, those princes and rebels who wished to kill Hawa Undu. Why all this palaver over a hiding dragon? Why hadn't they just asked a woman, one like Mam, one of those women who could do anything, and go anywhere, to just go inside the forest and talk to Hawa Undu in a nice voice? To make him a feast and pepper his palm butter with those spices Mam used and feed him pork and dry fish like a king? And she would not fight him. She would hold Hawa Undu's hand and lead him outside." - p. 139 "Men like him were the men I grew up with. All-American and well meaning, painstakingly oblivious of their privilege..." - p. 176 - "Ol' Ma says it takes a special man, a good man, to give his wife a blessing to leave him. That is what Gus did for me...Ol' Ma said that these men special men are clever and confident, so confident that they trust their choice of women, and they would never choose women who would not return to them." - pp. 181-2 "...the only thing that made me stay was wanting my daughters to know that they could go after anything they wanted, that they could fly too." - p. 200 - "These things were reminders of my smallness and the many ways life functioned outside my control; but there were coincidences that gave me a glimpse, though I was small, of just how powerful I could be. And I wanted to tell my daughters this. I wanted to teach them thier power and remind them of it every day..."
- the role that skin color and racism play in both cultures - the conflict between "American" blacks and "African" immigrants was something I observed many times while an educator - I also had many students who struggled between being at home where the family sought to preserve its language, culture, etc. and being at school and trying to fit in by learning English and looking like their fellow students - they worked hard to straddle two worlds - p. 142-3 - "'They make you not want your mother to sound African in school now, Then? That's what we sending you to school for?...I am African. And so are you!...Look at me...Are you ashamed of me?...Because if you're ashamed of me, then you're ashamed of yourself....You are African..Don't let them make you shame, yeh? You are African.'".- p. 120 - "...I could be beautiful in a place and still not enough, not because of who I was or anything I had done, but because of something as simple, and somehow grand in this new place, as the color of my skin." * p. 124 "...in this new place that Mam and Papa had told us was home, skin color was king - king above nationality, king above life stories, and, yes, even king above Christ." - p. 136 - "'...I just...I don't see color.'" - p. 137 - "...I was black in this kingdom where black was criminal, a stain, a deformity." - p. 146 - "Liberia lived with me every night, in my dreams, that I wear it on my skin..." - p. 147 - "'You're African, not really American black. So why do you take all of this race stuff so seriously?'"
- the costs and consequences of war - p. 73 - "During wartime, a man will not only find the person he hates to kill him, but he will find and kill anyone whom he thinks the person he hates loves or knows or once did business with." - p. 115 - "'If the war had not happened...'" - trauma - p. 118 - "'I didn't experience trauma in the way you're understanding it....I believe I had a happy childhood...Nothing horrible happened to me...I think I was lucky...'" (such a powerful, complex statement) - p. 155 -"'Who ruins the thing they are fighting for?'" - p. 218-9 - "'Not all fighters are bad. They all look bad...Most fighters, they will do bad things, but not all of them are bad. Do you understand? Some of these rebels them they get forced dto fight, they have no choice, but they stay good. You understand what I am saying?'"
- religion
- education
- love - p. 104 - "The Ol' Mas did not tell us that you could not throw away love once it was finished. That it would remain on us like blackened scars, underneath blouses in those places only we could see. That we would reach a point where it, once solid, would melt in our hands and we would never fully wash off its residue; and that some love, the truest love, also the most dangerous, could disfigure our core." - p. 204-5 - "This was the other side of love. Love gone is painful...But love almost gone - the lurking threat of loss - that was a daily torture, death realized every morning. And I did not know which was worse...Such is the danger of deep love, however beautiful. Dying lingers close behind." - p. 247 - "There was love, then there was what he had with Mam; his wildflower, his siren, Orpheus now in the depths, the hell of war, returned for her true loves."
- death and loss - p. 93 - "I had heard of death in many forms. The kind where spirits joined ancestors and lingered around us. The kind where a person went to paradise and waited for God in heaven to call them up. The kind where the soul is taken by God to a life after one on earth. None of these seemed to be ways of bringing his body back, of seeing him walk through the clearing with all of us on his mind and a smile so we would know. My Ol' Pa was gone. I would never see his body again." - p. 160 - "And while I cried, no matter how hard I cried, when she called my name I stopped, at once, because she said I seemed to know that tears were a way of letting the world know that the healing, the work, had already been done." - p. 162 - "'Death is not the end,' I thought to myself."
- mothers
- fathers
* - connections - p. 122 - "...everything is linked to everything else. What we have done to what we are doing, from where we've come to where we're going, our five-year-old actions to this morning's breakfast."
- stereotypes - p. 184 - "The presenter clicked a remote and a picture of a young child, no more that four years old, black, dirty, naked...faded onto the screen. He showed several other pictures of children, similar to the first, appearing hungry, sad, some crying, all of them staring directly into the camera. He spoke of how difficult it was for him to find a single person who could read or write. At that point I started to sweat. He spoke of the lack of compassion among fathers, Liberian fathers, and what it said of the African men he had been around...my head pounded...my body both hot and cold. Where was my garden in these pictures? Where was my husband and men like him? Where were my daughters?"
* story - p. 248 - "My Ol' Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow...There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But to remember among those who were lsot, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too."
I couldn't put this one down. Highly recommended!
August 7, 2021
This had some really interesting parts, but the overall structure was very odd to me.
You can hear more of my thoughts in this BookTube Prize Semifinals wrap up: https://youtu.be/GKH6y6n9V7k
You can hear more of my thoughts in this BookTube Prize Semifinals wrap up: https://youtu.be/GKH6y6n9V7k
July 15, 2020
"In the months after Mam left Liberia for New York, we talked to her every Sunday. She sounded the same to me then, though once or twice her voice disappeared while she spoke. I inhaled the heavy silence, hoping that some of her would seep through the phone so that I could lay my head against it."
•
Thoughts~
Not often is a first novel followed up with a memoir but Moore does a sensational job!
•
In The Dragons, The Giant, The Women Moore chronicles her families journey through escaping the Liberian Cival War to creating a life in America. Moore recounts her childhood in Liberia and in America. How at the tender age of five, living with her family, minus her mother, who she misses dearly is away in New York on a scholarship studying. War breaks out suddenly and they have to flee their home on foot. For three weeks they walk and hide until they reach the village of Lai. They wait there, figuring out their next move when a rebel soldier comes to them, telling them their mother has sent for them and they will be smuggled across the border. After they are across, Moore shares of life as a Black immigrant in America. How as an adult the aftermath of her harrowing childhood still lingers.
This memoir is so rich, deep and moving. I absolutely loved it and look forward to rereading it! Moore is a talented writer. Her prose are stirring and beautiful. I highly reccomend this one! And I'm so glad @belletrist picked this for their July book everyone needs to read this!
•
Thank You to the publisher for sending me this book opinions are my own.
•
Thoughts~
Not often is a first novel followed up with a memoir but Moore does a sensational job!
•
In The Dragons, The Giant, The Women Moore chronicles her families journey through escaping the Liberian Cival War to creating a life in America. Moore recounts her childhood in Liberia and in America. How at the tender age of five, living with her family, minus her mother, who she misses dearly is away in New York on a scholarship studying. War breaks out suddenly and they have to flee their home on foot. For three weeks they walk and hide until they reach the village of Lai. They wait there, figuring out their next move when a rebel soldier comes to them, telling them their mother has sent for them and they will be smuggled across the border. After they are across, Moore shares of life as a Black immigrant in America. How as an adult the aftermath of her harrowing childhood still lingers.
This memoir is so rich, deep and moving. I absolutely loved it and look forward to rereading it! Moore is a talented writer. Her prose are stirring and beautiful. I highly reccomend this one! And I'm so glad @belletrist picked this for their July book everyone needs to read this!
•
Thank You to the publisher for sending me this book opinions are my own.
January 28, 2021
This memoir was absolutely stunning in its writing, chronicling the author's flight from her home at the age of 5 during the first Liberian Civil War and her later life in America. I had to do a little research to get the background on the civil war, as the memoir from that time has the perspective of a child and doesn't get into the who's and why's. I was impressed with the author's ability to distinctly write her child and adult times of life, and there's one chapter in particular in her child time that was so powerful in its childlike consciousness, it hit me in the heart. I can't imagine the terror of fleeing on foot for months, but her father, with 4, 5, and 6 year old daughters in tow, clearly did all he could to shelter them in the horror, and the author refers to people "sleeping" everywhere on the road. What was more striking was when the author goes to therapy as an adult and she tells her therapist that her trauma is not her time in Liberia and fleeing war, but her trauma is experienced in America in the country's every day racism that beats you down. It was a sad memoir, but the sacrifice and heroism of parents looking out for their children really got me, as well as the author's stunning writing and the commentary she had on life as a Black girl from Africa in America.
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