Narrator Tovah Ott's supple and expressive tone is well suited to author Wayétu Moore's lyrical writing on her family's history in Liberia and the U.S. When Moore was 5 years old, the outbreak of civil war forced her family to flee Liberia on foot. Her mother, who had been studying at Columbia University, recruited a girl soldier to guide her family to safety in Sierra Leone. Ott creates juvenile and adult voices for the many individuals who populate this affecting memoir, including a sturdy, deep timbre for Moore's father and a quiet, steady intonation for her mother. Ott carries listeners through the family's many trials as they struggle to settle in America, including Moore's growing recognition of the effect of racism upon her identity. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir
Narrated by Tovah Ott
Wayétu MooreUnabridged — 7 hours, 48 minutes
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir
Narrated by Tovah Ott
Wayétu MooreUnabridged — 7 hours, 48 minutes
Overview
FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
An engrossing memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States
When 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.
Editorial Reviews
★ 05/04/2020
In this beautiful memoir of dislocation, a young girl flees war-torn Liberia with her family to America. Moore (She Would Be King) begins with herself as a five-year-old living with her sisters, grandparents, and father in Monrovia. When the 1990 civil war erupts with terrifying massacres by rebels overthrowing president Samuel Doe (who Moore imagines as “the Hawa Undu dragon, the monster in my dreams, the sum of stories I was too young to hear”), the family heads for Sierra Leone, hoping to get to America. Moore describes this desperate trek in the lyrical voice of her younger self, a dreamy girl who filters the danger through a folktale lens. The middle section tracks her childhood after her family resettles in Texas, then her trauma-plagued young adulthood in Brooklyn (“nightmares were old friends”), and racially fraught romances (“I never feared my blackness, until the men,” referring to the black men she first dated in college). The book’s final section holds a mirror to the first, describing in her mother’s voice her mother’s journey from New York back to Africa to rescue her lost family. Building to a thrumming crescendo, the pages almost fly past. Readers will be both enraptured and heartbroken by Moore’s intimate yet epic story of love for family and home. (June)
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, TIME MAGAZINE, MS. MAGAZINE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Immersive, exhilarating. . . . This memoir adds an essential voice to the genre of migrant literature, challenging false popular narratives that migration is optional, permanent and always results in a better life.”—The New York Times Book Review
“In her bruising new memoir, Moore describes the perilous journey as well as her experience of being a black immigrant living in the American South. Through it all, she threads an urgent narrative about the costs of survival and the strength of familial love.”—TIME
“The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is a beautifully written book about the experience of migrating—a story, particularly in this moment, that can never be told enough.”—Bitch Media
“A powerful look at the migrant experience and how its effects reverberate decades into the future.”—Book Riot
“Riveting and beautifully written. . . . The extraordinary power of [The Dragons, the Giant, the Women] resides not only in [Wayétu Moore’s] flight, but in her survival.”—National Book Review
“With the same fabled quality of She Would Be King, Moore embraces the fantastical elements of her experiences to weave a story of migration that compels readers to see migration narratives in a new way: as a multidimensional story that comes alive through more than one approach.”—Hippocampus
“Building to a thrumming crescendo, the pages almost fly past. Readers will be both enraptured and heartbroken by Moore’s intimate yet epic story of love for family and home.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Moore’s narrative style shines, weaving moments of lightness into a story of pain and conflict, family and war, loss and reunion.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Identity, family ties, heroism, and gender roles are beautifully woven in Moore's fable-like narrative. . . . Moore's observation that 'the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow' captures the emotional complexity of this powerful, stirring, and imaginatively allegorical memoir.”—Booklist, starred review
“Wayétu Moore has written an elegant, inspired, page-turning memoir I couldn’t put down. Destined to become a classic!”—Mary Karr
“A riveting narrative of survival and resilience and a tribute to the fierce love between parents and children.”—Mary Laura Philpott
“A propulsive, heart-rending memoir of love and war and peace. . . . The Dragons, The Giant, the Women is a major contribution to the new literature of African immigration.”—Namwali Serpell
“Deft and deeply human, Wayetu Moore’s The Dragons, the Giant, the Women had me pinned from its first page to its last.”—Mira Jacob
“A moving and richly drawn tale of a family threatened by violence in ‘90s Liberia. . . . A powerful, utterly convincing, and unforgettable story.”—Chigozie Obioma
“Wayétu Moore stretches the art of writing on family, war, and movement to mythical heights with her otherworldly poeticism.”—Morgan Jerkins
★ 06/01/2020
Recounting her childhood experience during the Liberian Civil War, Moore's (She Would Be King) memoir takes readers from a child's journey to a mother's memory, recounting the horrors of her family's flight to safety, the displacement of diaspora, and the everyday challenges of being African in America. Opening with her father's decision to flee with his three young daughters and their grandparents, Moore describes the weeks-long journey (and the horrors witnessed) with a lyric quality that reads like a fireside story. She then describes the different "seasons" of her life, considering her experience as an African among African Americans, and what it's like to date well-meaning white men, before inevitably asking the question that continues to haunt her: Why her mother was in America when her family's lives were torn apart. VERDICT Moore's narrative style shines, weaving moments of lightness into a story of pain and conflict, family and war, loss and reunion. Recommended for readers of women's stories and those interested in learning about African lived experience both on the continent and in the diaspora.—Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami
Narrator Tovah Ott's supple and expressive tone is well suited to author Wayétu Moore's lyrical writing on her family's history in Liberia and the U.S. When Moore was 5 years old, the outbreak of civil war forced her family to flee Liberia on foot. Her mother, who had been studying at Columbia University, recruited a girl soldier to guide her family to safety in Sierra Leone. Ott creates juvenile and adult voices for the many individuals who populate this affecting memoir, including a sturdy, deep timbre for Moore's father and a quiet, steady intonation for her mother. Ott carries listeners through the family's many trials as they struggle to settle in America, including Moore's growing recognition of the effect of racism upon her identity. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
2020-03-22
A lyrical reckoning with the aftermath of civil war.
The first Liberian civil war was a disaster for the people of Liberia, including Moore and her family. Only 5 years old at the time, she was forced to flee her home on foot alongside her family as rebels advanced down her street, guns firing. After weeks of walking, they found relative safety in the village of Lai, near the border with Sierra Leone, where they would remain for seven months. When a rebel arrived in Lai promising to sneak Moore’s family into Sierra Leone, the author breaks the narrative, jumping ahead 25 years to the mid-2010s. At that time, she lived in Brooklyn, and things were not going well. She was stalled on a novel (perhaps her acclaimed 2018 book She Would Be King). Amid the racial tensions following the highly publicized deaths of black citizens at the hands of police officers, she broke up with her white boyfriend after he insulted her, and she was having nightmares and considering returning to Liberia for the first time since she was a girl. This section drags a bit, as Moore’s problems take on a developed-nation air, especially in light of the chapters that preceded them. But for the remainder of the book, the author confronts the legacy of the war for her family and her country, trying in particular to understand the rebel woman who led her surviving family to safety. As Moore conducts this investigation in earnest, she writes a long section of the text in the voice of her mother. It reads like fiction in the sense that the author’s inhabiting of her mother’s character is absolute. Nonfiction purists might balk at this liberty, but the resulting intimacy is profound. Here and throughout, Moore’s control of language is impressive.
Formally dazzling yet coolly reflective prose makes for a refined memoir.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173335838 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 06/02/2020 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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