Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the woostify domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/latestwordpress/lonestar.a1professionals.net_public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
{"id":2097,"date":"2020-05-24T09:45:40","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T09:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=2097"},"modified":"2020-05-24T10:44:43","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T10:44:43","slug":"lone-star-review-dragons-giant-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=2097&lang=ar","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Review: THE DRAGONS, THE GIANT, THE WOMEN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of <\/span>Way\u00e9tu Moore’s memoir, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women<\/em> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cPapa, where we going?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAway,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Civil war came to Liberia during the rainy season of 1990, when Way\u00e9tu Moore\u2019s mother, Mam, was attending graduate school in the United States on a Fulbright award, and Way\u00e9tu was preparing for her fifth birthday party at home in Monrovia. A VHS tape of The Sound of Music <\/em>is playing, the party about to begin, when popping noises sound in the near distance. As the opening bars of \u201cEdelweiss\u201d sound in the Alps, Moore\u2019s father tells them to run.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Moore and her father, sisters, a couple of cousins, and grandmother flee on foot, just ahead of the rifles, joining the exodus of hundreds of thousands. After three weeks of walking roads crowded with bodies \u201csleeping\u201d in red pools, hiding in abandoned homes, eating nothing but sugarcane from the fields, and running gauntlets of checkpoints, the family makes it to the safety of Mam\u2019s ancestral village. Eventually, Mam hires a rebel soldier to smuggle the family into Sierra Leone, and then begins another dislocation and search for home, a place to belong.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/em><\/strong>is the second book from <\/span><\/span>Way\u00e9tu Moore<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a>, a memoir about her family\u2019s experience as refugees, then as immigrants in the United States, where Moore grew up in Texas. Her first book, She Would Be King<\/em>, was named a best novel of 2018 by multiple media outlets, including Publishers Weekly <\/em>and Entertainment Weekly<\/em>, and was a Sarah Jessica Parker Book Club selection and a finalist for the Hurston\/Wright Award. The Dragons<\/em>, I imagine, will follow in the King<\/em>\u2019s footsteps. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Moore tells the first part of her tale from the perspective of that five-year-old, whose memories of Liberia are of \u201ca place that made words sing\u201d and sweet with ripe mango and milk candy. Liberian politics and tribal conflicts are beyond her, and so adult talk of President Samuel Doe reminds Moore of folk tales of the Hawa Undu dragon, who was once a prince with good intentions but became corrupt; talk of rebel leader Charles Taylor reminds her of the mythical prince who entered the forest to kill the Hawa Undu dragon and bring peace, but whose good intentions are also corrupted. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Surreal juxtapositions continue as the narrative jumps to a thirty-something Moore perched on her fire escape, living in Brooklyn, where \u201cthe new transplants hurried home, as gentrifiers do when it is almost dark and they are still fearful of corners.\u201d Moore is no longer a new transplant, but she is still dislocated, still running, \u201cnever arriving,\u201d having grown up in a place where she was crowned homecoming queen under the Friday night lights, but where \u201cskin color was king\u2014king above nationality, king above life stories, and, yes, even king above Christ.\u201d Enneh-so?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I recommend reading the dialogue aloud to approximate the effect of the lyrical rhythms of speech. As the days and weeks of escape drag on, Moore employs an effective technique for conveying the monotony of boredom\u2014and terror\u2014with epic run-on sentences, stretching for pages (\u201c. . . the lace at the bottom of my dress got left somewhere behind me with my shoes and the tank and my girlhood and the shooting that did not stop\u201d). The sense of immediacy, even after so many years, is visceral. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the last quarter of the book, Mam\u2019s first-person narrative relates the other side of this story, a thrilling surprise, a tale of courage, daring, and serendipity. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"