“FENGBE, KEH KAMBA BEH. Fengbe, kemu beh. We have nothing but we have God. We have nothing but we have each other.”
Like the voice of the wind, this song pervades the vivid landscape of Wayétu Moore’s debut novel, in which the Liberian-born writer explores the early days of Liberia, in the 1840s, through three characters: Gbessa, June Dey, and Norman Aragon.
In She Would Be King, these three impossible lives (and a country) emerge out of slavery, violence, and exile. Death eludes and “mocks” Gbessa, of the Vai people, who constantly suffers the pain of dying without its relief. Born on a cursed day, Gbessa grows up under house arrest until she is exiled. Alone in the forest, torn from her family and people, she sings, “Fengbe keh kamba beh. Femgbe, kemu beh.” The “we” of this song haunts the reality of Gbessa’s situation, and to offer a glimpse of the big picture, Moore writes: “The words ascended, joining the traveling wind, and sometimes it was as though someone were singing with her.”
And someone was. Across time, language, and distance. Ol’ Ma Famatta sits in the moon, and the slave once known as Charlotte whispers comfort in the wind as if to say loneliness is not forever, as if to promise Gbessa that she is not alone.
Across the Atlantic, on a Virginia plantation, June Dey becomes a free man after he discovers his inhuman strength and invulnerable skin. In Jamaica, Norman Aragon, who can disappear at will, uses his powers to seek his mother’s dream of Africa. Like Gbessa, Norman and June Dey have suffered loss. Like Gbessa, they wander alone, with only the whispering wind and history to guide them.
“Take care, my darling,” the wind whispers. “Take care, my friend.”
It is a difficult feat to bring together people from different lands, but Moore deftly weaves these lives through their shared gifts and the narrating wind, a sorrowful but hope-filled voice that shares their history and sees them as one people.
After the characters meet in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, Moore moves outward, gesturing toward the particulars of history, how the formerly enslaved came to settle in the land that became Liberia. At one point in the narrative, Gbessa is separated from her companions during a battle with French invaders. She is found by a group of settlers, learns their language and customs, marries into society, and mourns her past—those she left behind, the person she used to be. Even though the novel begins to lose its enchanting voice after it tells the origin stories of Gbessa, June Dey, and Norman Aragon, Moore clearly highlights the rifts between the African-American settlers and the Indigenous tribes, the complexities that arise when we question who is foreign and who is familiar.
With this poignant debut, Wayétu Moore situates herself as a bold storyteller, a weaver of historical threads and magical realism. Rooted in familiar and painful realities, the novel evokes the authority of fairy tales. Late in the narrative, the gifted companions come together once again to fight for Liberia, for settlers and tribes alike. Their numbers are few, their resources sparse, but even as they face defeat, Gbessa echoes the truth of her existence: She will not die. They will not die.
Elinam Agbo earned an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. Born in Ghana, she grew up in the U.S. Midwest.
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