The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

What devices does Moore use to convey the trauma and confusion of life during a civil war?

Familial and community bonds are integral even during times of upheaval. How does Moore’s memoir explore the theme of family and community? How does the reminder of Mam’s absence reinforce this theme?

Why do you think Moore uses stock characters from fairy tales to represent various men in the novel while identifying female characters collectively, and more mundanely, as “the women?”

Moore visits a psychiatrist but seems to be ambivalent about psychiatric analysis. How does her therapist’s comment about how women of color downplay bad experiences and wear a mask of perfection relate to Moore’s experiences of racism and white privilege?

Moore occasionally eschews conventional grammar and punctuation. How does this device help her convey mood and tone in parts of the memoir?

Explain Moore’s approach to historiography. How does she tell and retell the history of Liberia and the African continent through her narrative?

Why do you think Moore shifted out of the first-person narrative voice and into that of her mother in Chapter 19? What effect did this have? Could she have told her mother’s story as impactfully by retaining the memoir’s first-person perspective? Why or why not?

What position does the memoir take on morality, particularly the behavior of women rebels like Satta, during the Liberian Civil War? Consider Jallah’s comments about how rebels did bad things but not all rebels are bad. What do you make of this? Do you agree? Why or why not?