Gbessa, or "She Would Be King," by Wayétu Moore

Myths, some more religious than others, appear to be essential to human existence. They serve to explain the origin of various societies and often are the source of values and behavioral norms. Most have important supernatural elements that elevate such stories above the commonplace and render them seemingly timeless.

Artists, seeking to give their work and thus themselves a transcendent quality, often anchor their efforts in myth. One thinks, for instance, of Richard Wagner basing what he considered his masterpiece – the Ring Cycle operas – in Norse legend. And James Joyce appropriating Homer’s epic to give “Ulysses” a framework and a name that serves to place the book in a more universal context than early 20^th century Dublin.

Then there’s T.S. Eliot who identified Tiresias, a leading prophet in Greek mythology, as the most important voice in his poem “The Waste Land.”

All of which brings me to contemporary American author Wayétu Moore, who has apparently decided that Liberia, her distant homeland, needs a foundation myth that she provides in her debut novel, “She Would Be King.” Scheduled for released in hardcover in September 2018. Moore, in interviews, has described it as “a novel of African magical realism.”

Those interested can get a taste of what is to come from the Summer issue of “The Paris Review,” which contains an excerpt from the book – presumably the first chapter or so.

Therein, one learns the story of Gbessa, a girl who had the misfortune of being born on a day deemed inauspicious because of the murder of a cat – “the spirits,” having told Gbessa’s people though the elders to take care of sensitive animals, “specifically cats.” Neither Gbessa nor her parents had anything to do with the cat’s death, but that doesn’t matter. Gbessa is tarred by association and among other things, her father, “whose reputation was destroyed by her birth,” will have nothing to do with her. 

The elders declare she is cursed, which will lead to certain consequences.

One thinks here of Greek myth, and the need for consultations with Pythia, the oracle at Delphi, to avoid taking actions at times that might anger the gods.

When Gbessa comes of age, at 13, she is to be taken into the woods to be killed.  But luckily, she secretly befriended the warrior charged with this task when he was very young and he abandons her in a cave instead. Initially she lives on some food brought to her by her mother, which she shares with the forest animals. As a result, they take care of her when the food runs out, teaching her, among other things, which plants are poisonous.

“The animals fed her as she thought mothers should feed their children, sheltered her as she expected fathers should protect their daughters.”

One thinks here of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Left on a river bank to die, they survived in part by being suckled by a she-wolf in a cave.

Well, similarities among myths of different societies are common. And what often distinguishes one detective story from another is location and character.

To give Ms Moore credit, she’s not shying away from hard truths.  On the basis of prevailing thought in the U.S., one might think that the enslavement of Africans began with the arrival of white traders. 

But not in the early days of the region that apparently eventually became Liberia.

Gbessa is from a settlement called Lai and when the warriors of that town went to battle, “after a village was defeated, those who did not want to return to Lai with the warriors were killed; others who surrendered willingly came as captives and were traded as slaves to families like Safua’s.”  (Safua is the boy who befriends Gbessa as a child and as a result doesn’t kill her when, as a warrior, he is instructed to do so.)

 What happened to the defeated enemies of the Lai sounds very similar to what happened when one Greek city state defeated another.