Indeed, much of Moore’s life in The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is marked by the trauma of absence—whether it be the separation from her mother or other family members, exile from her home country of origin, or the liminal dual absence of creating home in two separate countries separated by a vast ocean.
However, the most haunting absence is the lack of accountability imposed on the rebels and other perpetrators of the horrific violence that affected so many lives. After Moore’s return to Liberia, she is struck with one major question: what happened to the survivors—both the victims and those who committed the atrocities?
“Where did the rebels go?” I asked Papa and watched as his hands squeezed the steering wheel.
“Look outside the window. They’re all around here,” he said.
“They just picked up and resumed their lives as if nothing happened,” Mam said.
But for Moore, and for others, it was impossible to resume life as if nothing had happened. She had to understand; she had to return; she had to sort through the fragments of memory and trauma to discover herself and her place in the world. She had to make sense of the mystery of her mother and the mystery of Satta, the rebel woman soldier who had saved them all.
In The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, it is the women are heroes: there is Moore’s mother, the woman who will not rest until she raises the money to return to Liberia and find her family when everyone is telling her it is too dangerous; there is Satta, the woman who is the rebel soldier who atones by rescuing hidden or captured refugees and leading them to safety; and finally, there is Wayétu Moore, the woman who is the speaker for her community—the one who honors and remembers the culture, building a memorial to the lost, to the survivors of the horrors of war in language and in form.