The Merle-Smith Campus was treated to a special in-person visit from author Wayétu Moore, whose memoir The Dragons, The Giant, The Women will be read by ninth graders as part of the FIRE curriculum in the spring semester.

The Class of 2025 gathered in person in Dyer Auditorium for Ms. Moore’s visit, which was also attended by other students interested in her work.

Ms. Moore compared exploring identity to peeling layers of an onion. We only know the guarded surface of others and most of us have barely touched the inner rings of our own identities. She told students:

I've mentioned to you so many different aspects of my identity [...] So I began to go even further with an activity. I like to call it peeling the onion, right? Each of the identities I listed, if I spend time with them, so many layers would be revealed underneath any given section, right? There are many layers of complexity and meaning.

Wayétu was born in Liberia in West Africa and immigrated to the United States in the midst of the Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s. Her memoir documents those experiences, beginning from the perspective of herself as a five-year-old relatively unaware of the dangers, and the “Dragons,” surrounding her. Her father, Augustus Moore, the “Giant” of the story, shepherds her family across the Liberian border into Sierra Leone and eventually to the U.S., where his wife, Wayétu’s mother, was studying on a Fulbright Scholarship.

 Junior Okezue Bell '23 felt a personal connection with Ms. Moore’s background and stated:

As a Nigerian, I was so inspired by Wayétu’s ability to articulate her experience being a ‘mixed’ black individual. I myself am mixed in the sense that my dad is black American and my mom is Nigerian, and I’ve constantly thought about new ways to explore my hyphenated identity. Wayetú Moore has inspired me to delve deeper into my family history, and it was so amazing to hear about hers.

Ms. Moore folded back a new layer of her identity with each new slide of her presentation. She struck creativity and curiosity into the hearts of her captive listeners as she brought them with her on a journey of self discovery.

Initially, the definition of identity seems simple. Identity is who you are and how you perceive yourself yet, why is it so difficult to describe one's own identity? The reason for this dilemma is easily answered: an identity cannot be described in one word. For example, Ms. Moore is a mother, an author, a Texan, a Liberian, and an inspiration to young students looking to find themselves.

She described how each person’s identity changes over the course of their day, and on the day of her visit she claimed:

The woman who left my Manhattan apartment this morning is different from the one who stands before you, because the events of my drive here, my walk into this building, and my previous conversations now live in me and with me and thus have changed me.

She filled the students with questions about their deeper identity. Junior Rohan Mehta '23 said, “It was wonderful to experience an in-person assembly again for the first time in over two years, especially one that left me with so many thought-provoking questions."

Similarly, senior Favor Ufondu '22 was excited to have someone as “insightful, down to earth, and funny” as Ms. Moore, share her identity with us.

To put it simply, Ms. Moore opened her audience’s eyes to the idea that identity is ever changing. She asked to look inward and think about who we really are and she has impacted her listeners' identities through sharing her journey in finding her own.