The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Tovah Ott
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By:
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Wayétu Moore
About this listen
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.
©2020 Wayétu Moore (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"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 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
"Ott’s extensive experience certainly explains her agile character transitions…. From disoriented young children to harried adults, rebel fighters to refugees, and an anxious mother and searching daughter, Ott shifts readily, creating diverse personas." --Booklist
“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
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Story
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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Beautiful story
- By Norhilda on 05-09-19
By: Carolyn Forché
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The Girl Who Smiled Beads
- A Story of War and What Comes After
- By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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The Teller of Secrets
- A Novel
- By: Bisi Adjapon
- Narrated by: Anniwaa Buachie
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial "secret keeper" of her family, as tight-lipped about her father's adultery as she is about her half-sisters' sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women's secrets and men's secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways.
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Hmm took a while to grasp
- By LATOYA LEWIS on 06-25-24
By: Bisi Adjapon
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Two Crosses
- Secrets of the Cross, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Musser
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.
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Faith, Romance, Spies, and Fascinating History
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-19
By: Elizabeth Musser
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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The Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
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Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
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A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
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African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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We Begin at the End
- By: Chris Whitaker
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Duchess Day Radley is a 13-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.
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Horrible narrator in this audible book
- By M. patton on 03-03-21
By: Chris Whitaker
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The Song Poet
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until one day a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good.
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Beautiful, full of sadness, power, and heart.
- By Melissa L. Magana on 04-27-17
By: Kao Kalia Yang
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The Girl with the Louding Voice
- A Novel
- By: Abi Daré
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams.
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A must HEAR!
- By Michelle on 03-09-20
By: Abi Daré
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Don't Look for Me
- A Novel
- By: Wendy Walker
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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One night, Molly Clarke walked away from her life. She doesn't want to be found. Or at least, that's the story. The car abandoned miles from home. The note found at a nearby hotel. The shattered family that couldn’t be put back together. They called it a “walk away.” It happens all the time. Women disappear, desperate to leave their lives behind and start over. But is that what really happened to Molly Clarke?
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Better than Gone Girl!
- By Kristen Harris on 09-17-20
By: Wendy Walker
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All Our Names
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Korey Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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All Our Names is the story of a young man who comes of age during an African revolution, drawn from the hushed halls of his university into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, and the path of revolution leads to almost certain destruction, he leaves behind his country and friends for America. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into the routines of small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past....
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A Tale of Two Continents
- By David on 07-31-14
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
What listeners say about The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DEC
- 03-27-23
Gripping and contemplative first person perspective
An unusually great telling of an all too familiar tale. Describing the revolution from a child’s perspective, in the first part of the story, was especially compelling. I did find the performance a bit difficult to understand/follow at times.
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- Amgal23
- 06-21-21
Great Memoir
This memoir is very well written. The author magically transports you to her childhood through her storytelling. I also loved her debut novel, She Would Be King, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. Her memoir is so vividly told you want to read more about her.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Coleen Michelle Montgomery
- 02-24-21
Lyricism didn't translate to audio
I was really looking forward to this book but just didn't enjoy it. Even as an avid reader/listener, I felt confused about shifts in timeline/perspective/location and about characters. (It took me until mid-book to realize both her father and grandfather were escaping with her.) Maybe I would have enjoyed it more in print.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Hokage Rashaud
- 01-16-21
WOW
The story and the narrator easily capture a child's innocence during a crisis. The strength of love during war and the faith that threaded this family together through it all. The author uses underling themes of food, language, and culture to explain the differences between Africa and America. And the narrator is eloquent in honoring each of the aspects in her own unique way. Well Done! CB
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-21-21
Vivid and Compelling Story
I loved this book. the intertwining narratives were very compelling and it kept me on the edge of my seat. I loved hearing the "voices" of the generations of women as they grew and experienced the world.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jo Ann Hernesmaa
- 09-30-21
The Human Experience
The writer has a beautiful flow about telling a story, it was meant to be an oral story Loved it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Lydia C.
- 04-27-21
A Mother's Love and Endurance
A touching story of on woman's strive to be independent and powerful, of the need to advance herself and her education, while struggling to protect and be reunited with her family. #TheWomen
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2 people found this helpful
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- J. Levine
- 08-02-22
engrossing
Long but lovingly told true story of the escape and reunion of Ms. Moore's family from Liberia during conflict. Painful history laced with deep traditions and how trauma imprints on a child.
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- AuthorAnnaBella
- 07-05-20
A Riveting and Powerful Memoir
The Dragon The Giant The Women encapsulates some of life’s most solemn issues: war, racism, migration, love, psychological issues, the power of hope and prayer, and then some. Wayétu shared with us a first-hand account of the war in Liberia. Skillfully she shifted gears as she recanted events from a child’s perspective and then to the realism of an adult. Wayétu educated us, giving us just bits of Liberia’s rich culture – tribes, language, folk tales, and tribal remedies. Although the story was filled with how hateful we as humans can be against each other, there was a more powerful narrative that reigned from cover to cover – one of love, strength, support, community, hope, and prayer. Her ability in her early years to pull from her ancestral gift of storytelling to vividly juxtapose who, The Dragon The Giants The Women all were. I especially admired Ma and Satta’s strength and tenacity – unwavering in their decisions.
What great lengths would you go for love and family?
Memoir Junkie - AuthorAnnaBella
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7 people found this helpful
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- Anneliese Knop
- 08-23-22
Everything you could ever want from a memoir
I had read the authors novel a couple years ago and loved it. Intrigued by this new title, I expected another novel. I have it often read memoirs, but once I started this one I couldn’t put it down. I wasn’t disappointed by my mistake, but so much more intrigued and inspired because of it. The author has a gift for storytelling, whether it’s a work of fiction or reminiscences of incredible lives. Her lyrical prose draws you in, her narrative style presents a beautiful world full of its imperfections and opportunities that I now long to visit for myself.
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