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Top of the pile
86
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
78/100Critics
94/100Scholars
Author:
Wayétu Moore
Publisher:
Graywolf Press
Date:
June 2, 2020
A memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States.
What The Reviewers Say
...[an] immersive, exhilarating memoir ...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.
... a book of gripping realism.
In the final pages, Moore brings 5-year-old Tutu back to narrate the reunion with Mam. Told in spare, childlike prose, the scene is vivid and heart-shattering. (Full disclosure: When I read that section aloud to my husband, we both cried.) Moore’s gorgeously rendered memoir is an exhortation not to surrender to tragedy fatigue. There are so many stories of war and forced migration that they may, at a distance, blur into sameness. But zoom in and those abstractions sharpen into singular stories, each one a complicated blend of loss and salvation, tragedy and triumph, bitterness and wisdom..
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—and terror—with epic run-on sentences, stretching for pages.
