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She Would Be King
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She Would Be King, by Wayétu Moore
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I'll also be joining in later this month.
If you're on the fence about joining this read, this teaser from The Guardian's review might be just the temptor:...Moore’s brand of magic realism is close kin to Beloved and The Underground Railroad, bending the rules of history and the natural world in order to move both closer to justice. When it comes to explorations of slavery in novels, there is little patience left for catalogues of atrocities, but an abiding interest in finding fresh ways of exhuming something useful from the murk. Give us alternative histories, unfamiliar forms, genre-leaping speculations. Moore’s novel pulls this off with an epic sweep. It’s a tour de force that crescendoes to its conclusion, reimagining the birth of Liberia in a way that is tender, humane and suffused with lyricism."
Warning, the rest of Sara Collins' review includes spoilers.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
I read this last year but would love to join the discussion when others have finished.
I read this last year as well. I'm interested to see what others think of the book.
I've just finished and would also like to hear what others have to say about their experience with this book. Despite some flaws with the writing and the big dramatic "Hollywood Ending", I found a lot to like about it. The historical account on the American Colonization Society and their role in establishing Liberia was interesting, something I did not know about.
It's only out in hardback in the UK and not in my library so, although I really want to read it, have been hesitant about dropping hardback money. However library has now confirmed they haven't had enough requests to get a copy at all, so so am just going to cave and buy it on Kindle.Thoughts hopefully next week!
Hmm. I've just finished it, and I have to say I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this one. I enjoyed the first half greatly and highlighted many an impactful passage, but the second half fizzled out so completely that I was left scratching my head...?
Melody, I completely agree that it fizzled out in the second half. June Dey and Norman disappeared for virtually the entire half until the very end. And the final battle seemed like a let down. It was a relatively anticlimactic end as far as battles go.
Finally managed to get a hold and finish reading this.I agree with everyone else that the back half of the book kind of fizzled out. Both June Dey and Norma, though symbolically important to what the book was saying, actually served no real narrative purpose in the end, which was really disappointing as I liked them both and wanted to see them get a stronger storyline (or even just see more of what they were up to after they parted ways.
Still lots to like in it and find interesting I knew very little about the founding of Liberia, nor the role of America's 'back to Africa' colonisation in it (am more familiar with the British 'Back to Africa' project and Sierra Leone), but knowing it now, I am very glad that the principal character here was an indigenous woman. I would have liked to see more indigenous characters in more than just passing though. I would also have liked to have seen more of the diplomacy between the various indigenous peoples, who seemed to have magically all gathered by the end. Reading into Liberian history now, the book also seems to have ended on a much more positive note for the coloniser-indigenous relationship than actually happened for a very long time.
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Our first group read of the year is She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore.
Wayétu Moore (from author's website)
Wayétu Moore is the author of She Would Be King, released in September, 2018. Her memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women will also be released on June 2, 2020.
Moore is the founder of One Moore Book, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015.Her writing can be found in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featuredin The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.
She’s a graduate of Howard University, University of Southern California and Columbia University. Moore is a founding faculty member of Randolph College MFA program and a 2019 Distinguished Visiting Writer at Syracuse University MFA.
She Would be King (British hardcover blurb)
In the west African village of Lai, red-haired Gbessa is cursed at birth and exiled on suspicion of being a witch. Bitten by a viper and left for dead, she survives to discover a new life with a group of African American settlers in the colony of Monrovia.
Then Gbessa meets two extraordinary others; June Dey – a man of unusual strength, born into slavery on a plantation in Virginia – and Norman Aragon, the child of a white British coloniser and a Maroon slave from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, who can fade from sight at will.
Soon all three realise that they are cursed – or perhaps, uniquely gifted. Together they protect the weak and vulnerable, but only Gbessa can salvage the tense relationship between the settlers and the indigenous tribes.
There is no dedicated discussion leader this month, so please do chip in with whatever thoughts, questions, and opinions you want to share.