Dragons, the Giant, the Women

When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big 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 they can be reunited, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, along a dangerous road, heading for the relative safety of their remote family village. Here they will hide until a remarkable rescue by a rebel soldier who smuggles them across the border.Spanning this harrowing journey in Moore's early childhood, her years adjusting to life in the USA as a black woman and an immigrant, and her eventual return to Liberia, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is an unforgettable story of the search for home in the midst of upheaval. In capturing both the hazy magic and the stark realities of what is 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.

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, Wayétu Moore has written an elegant, inspired, page-turning memoir I couldn't put down. Destined to become a classic!, A propulsive, heart-rending memoir of love and war and peace, one that marries the language of fantasy with the texture of reality, a thick, riotous beauty with the harshest, rawest pain... a major contribution to the new literature of African immigration., Absolutely breathtaking. In extraordinary prose and with remarkable restraint, Wayétu Moore has created both a riveting narrative of survival and resilience and a tribute to the fierce love between parents and children., Deft and deeply human, Wayétu Moore's The Dragons, The Giant, The Women, had me pinned from its first page to its last. Its central question still spins through me: What does it mean for an adult to return for the childhood lost to civil war? Moore shows how the comforts we use to make sense of trauma-dragons for despots, giants for fathers, enemies who are only ever evil-can be the very things that keep us traumatized. This is an astonishment of a book.

Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book, which publishes literature for children whose narratives are largely missing from the children's book publishing industry, and is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern California. She teaches at the City University of New York's John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel She Would Be King is also published by ONE.

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