We moved to Houston when I was eight, and that's where I spent my formative years. I lived in New York first and then Connecticut, then Memphis. My family left Liberia when I was five and we moved around a lot. So, how do you define home? Where do you consider home to be and how does your understanding of home influence your characters’ understanding of the same? You fled Liberia when you were five, and you've lived in the U.S. We caught up with Wayétu over the phone to discuss magical realism in black stories across the diaspora, liberties she took in her retelling of Liberia’s history, and how ideas of blackness can change depending on geographic location. The story itself raises questions about black kinship the idea of a black utopia. She Would Be King is written with the sensibilities of a poet and sharp attention to the interior lives of her characters, as well as the external circumstances that inform their behavior.

The three meet in Liberia, where they unwittingly join forces to quell French incursion against native people living on the land. The story is narrated by the wind, and features three main characters, none of whom can die: Gbessa, a Vai girl shunned by her own community June Dey, born of a dead woman and an enslaved man on a plantation in Virginia and Norman Aragon, the son of a Maroon woman and an abusive English scholar in Jamaica. Wayétu Moore is the author of the debut novel, She Would Be King, a story that recasts the founding of Liberia.

She would be king by wayetu moore