Storytelling as an Act of Love w. WAYÉTU MOORE

Author photo by Yoni Levy.

Episode 35

Wayétu Moore’s debut novel, She Would Be King, is out now from Graywolf Press. Wayétu 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.

Discussed In This Episode

Oral storytelling. Discovering yourself through literature. Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters. Racism is learned behavior. Magical realism isn’t necessarily magical. Representation in literature and making room for diasporic narratives. Strange Magic and co-opting rituals. Colonialism. “There’s a pervasive thievery of agency that occurs.” Showing black people as being their own savior. “Thank god the alien got cut.” Admitting that you want your work to be read. Preserving your relationship with your craft. “Writing and reading has been my escape and has saved me in a lot of ways and rehabilitated me, and I don’t want to mess up this relationship, because then what will I have, to be those things to me?” Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine. Storytelling as an act of love.

Recommended Reading

She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore
”In Wayétu Moore’s Ambitious Debut Novel, Liberia Is Reborn,” The New York Times
Hawa Golakai
Robtel Pailey

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