"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.… 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."
—AudioFile Magazine
“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
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.