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    She Would Be King: A Novel
    Unavailable
    She Would Be King: A Novel
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    She Would Be King: A Novel
    Ebook424 pages6 hours

    She Would Be King: A Novel

    By Wayétu Moore

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and history—a dazzling retelling of Liberia’s formation

    Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.

    Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. “If she was not a woman,” the wind says of Gbessa, “she would be king.” In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 11, 2018
    ISBN9781555978686
    Author

    Wayétu Moore

    Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book 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.

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    Reviews for She Would Be King

    4/5

    71 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great premise and intriguing characters. The writing was a little weak in some places. It illuminated some history I did not know anything about. The slipstream nature worked -- the combination of realism and fantasy was well done and appropriate.
    • 3/5
      This is a blend of historical fiction and magical realism purporting to tell of the founding of the African country of Liberia. Gbessa is a native woman with red hair who is considered a witch, June Dey is an escaped American slave with a body inpenatrable by bullets, and Norman Aragon is the son of a white scientist and a Jamaican maroon (an African who has escaped slavery there) who has the ability to disappear. This was just too weird a book for me, although I did finish it.
    • 4/5
      This was a start but was well worth the effort to finish it. Beginning in the bush country in a place in Africa that would become Liberia, Gbessa is born with a curse. She is isolated from her people and eventually sent away. She is bitten by a poisonous snake but does not die. The beginning chapter is hard to read mainly due to the strange syntax of sentences and just never sure what is real and what is not.The second part is the story of a baby boy born on the Emerson plantation in Virginia. His mother named him "June" because that's when she first felt him move in her and Dey after his father. She did not want her child named Emerson. The mother dies, June is known as Moses and develops an amazing strength. As a grown man, June escapes the plantation and eventually finds himself on a ship returning to Africa. The American Colonization Society is setting up a country for returned slaves.In Jamaica, a baby is born to a white man and a maroon mother. (Africans who had escaped slavery and established their own communities). Norman Aragon develops the ability to become invisible as his mother does. His mother teaches him about the earth, herbs, etc. and after the death of both the father and mother, Norman wants to return to the land of his mother's birth, Africa.In Africa, the three meet and each becomes aware of the others' skills. Gbessa takes most of the story as she becomes a maid in the household of free blacks in Monrovia. These blacks, who were once slaves, have become the leaders of the community and developed a very rigid social ladder looking down on the indigenous peoples. Gbessa eventually marries a strong man who is a leader and finds herself torn between the "civilized and Christian" Blacks and the natives in the bush.This is a complicated story and not particularly easy to read. I've never been a fan of mystical realist, but this story drew me in especially in the second half of the book. The writing is excellent although I had to go back often to re read past chapters. Probably my weakness, not the book. Overall, I liked it a lot.
    • 4/5
      This one took some time to develop - it seemed like it took forever to get going. Africa diaspora experience, complete with more sentient ghosts, etc. I spent two weeks reading the first 180 pages and one day the last 120. Would have made a heck of a comic book.