From Gbessa’s loneliness and desire to reconnect to her people, we then move firstly to the story of June Dey, born on a Virginia plantation and apparently also able to survive being beaten and shot with skin unmarked, and then on to Norman, a young boy in Jamaica. The day of her birth being cursed by the death of an older woman in her village, Gbessa is feared and eventually exiled, whereupon she discovers her unnatural ability – whether blessing or curse – to be able to simply not die. The book opens from the perspective of Gbessa, an ostracised and apparently cursed young girl from an indigenous Liberian Vai tribe. In this exhilarating and memorable debut, Liberian-American author Wayétu Moore explores history and identity through three characters scattered, initially, across the globe, and later brought together during the birth of Moore’s home country Liberia in the mid 1800s, in what became Africa’s first modern republic.
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