Writing from Liberia: A brief introduction to the nation’s literary legacy
The inception of serious literary writing in Liberia can be traced back to Edward Wilmot Blyden’s seminal work, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, published in 1887. Before the 1950s, the most prominent creative writers in Liberia were politicians or members of the elite class—descendants of freed slaves who had returned from the United States after the abolition of slavery in 1865. A few of them included Daniel B. Warner, H. Carey Thomas, Edwin Barclay, and others. Barclay wrote Liberia’s earliest known collection of poetry, Leaves from the Love Garden. This was followed by A. Doris Banks’s collection, Poems of Liberia. They used their identities as Liberia’s elite class and their stories of what it means to be an Americo-Liberian to inform their writing.
Liberian literature began to reflect the lives of ordinary (native) Liberians with the arrival of Bai T. Moore and Wilton Sankawulo—two of Liberia’s most renowned writers known for exploring the culture and traditions of the Liberian people. Bai T. Moore, a poet and novelist, was among the first to do so. Moore was born in the Gola town of Dimeh, Bomi County. He obtained a degree in agriculture from Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia, United States. Back in Liberia, he worked for many years with the government of Liberia and held various positions related to culture, education, and tourism—both locally and with UNESCO. He also founded Liberia’s National Cultural Center.
Moore’s (1916–1988) literary debut came with an anthology, Echoes from the Valley, published in 1947 to mark Liberia’s centennial Independence Day. The anthology was edited by Roland Tombekai Dempster, a writer and editor, who was the author of The Mystic Reformation of Gondolia (1953). “Africa’s Plea” remains his most famous poem.
After being included in the Echoes from the Valley anthology, Moore went on to become one of Liberia’s most celebrated writers. His works, widely taught in Liberian schools, portrayed the lives of indigenous Liberians and were published in numerous anthologies both within and outside the country.
Vivian Edwards, a former professor at the University of Liberia, described Moore’s work in this way:
“To read Bai T. Moore is to better understand the common people—what they feel, what they wear, what they eat, how they speak, and how they think.”
Another Liberian literary critic and short story writer, Robert H. Brown, in his analysis of Moore’s poetry and prose, wrote:
“Moore’s works demonstrate a full embrace of the concerns, suffering, styles, and even language of the masses around him. But even Moore occasionally slips into the tendency of placing the language of the elite in the mouths of workers and peasants—the very masses who are the central characters in most of his works. A good example of this can be seen in his novellas, Murder in the Cassava Patch and The Money Doubler.
In these works, there are honest attempts by Moore to faithfully capture the language and sensibility of the masses against the backdrop of Western education and lifestyle.”
Moore’s work remains widely read in Liberia, though only marginally outside the country. He passed away in 1988, a year before the outbreak of the Liberian civil war. His most well-known poems were included in A Selection of African Poetry (1988), edited by Kojo Senanu and Theo Vincent.
His books—Ebony Dust (1962), a collection of poems, and Murder in the Cassava Patch (1968), a novella—remain among the most significant works written by a Liberian writer before the war.
Like Moore, Wilton Sankawulo (1937–2009)—the first Liberian graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop—was a renowned writer and statesman. His work focused on rural Liberia, and his deep understanding of Liberian culture is reflected throughout his short stories and novels. Sankawulo published several works, beginning in the early 1970s. He released The Marriage of Wisdom and Other Tales, a collection of Liberian stories, in 1974. His best-known novel, The Rain and the Night, was published in 1979. Other notable works include Why Nobody Knows When He Will Die and Other Stories and Sundown at Dawn: A Liberian Odyssey (2005), which tells the story of Dougba Senfenui Jr., a member of the Kpelle tribe who struggles to reconcile his indigenous background with missionary teachings while striving to attain an education. His novel Birds Are Singing (2010) was posthumously published.
Sankawulo also served as the interim leader of Liberia from September 1, 1995, to September 3, 1996, as chairman of the Council of State, the collective presidency of the Liberian National Transitional Government. He died in 2009.
Moore and Sankawulo monopolized Liberia’s literary scene before the establishment of the Liberia Association of Writers (LAW), which helped foster a new generation of writers and thinkers. The works of Moore and Sankawulo captured the feelings, thoughts, and everyday experiences of ordinary people—their love lives, struggles, and triumphs.
Other contemporaries included Kona Khasu (James Emmanuel Roberts) and Ophelia S. Lewis, who each published collections of poems, short stories, and novels. Lewis’s works include Heart Men, The Dowry of Virgins, and others.
Khasu, born James Emmanuel Robert in 1942, was raised in Soniwein, Monrovia. He graduated from Monrovia College and went on to earn degrees from Hobart College, Boston University, and Harvard. In the 1970s, he directed the Liberian Cultural Troupe at Kendejah and taught at the University of Liberia. Khasu produced and directed Liberia’s first television series, Kotati, and later Homage to Africa, which was developed through Blamadon Theater. From 2006 to 2012, he served as Deputy Minister of Education for Planning. He wrote five plays, the most famous being Kandakai, The Lost Scenes of the Magic Flute, and The Greedy Farmer, which received mixed reviews from Liberian audiences.
Khasu’s works largely focus on urban Monrovia, class structures, and the lives of both elites and commoners. While many of his works are now lost, The Seeds of Time (1971) and Homage to Africa (1981), both poetry collections, remain his most notable works. His well-known poem, Our Man on Broad Street, has been widely anthologized.
The early history of Liberian literature was largely written by women authors, notwithstanding their small numbers. Fatima Massaquoi was one of the rare female writers. She authored The Autobiography of an African Princess (posthumously, 2013). The book chronicled her life from her birth in southern Sierra Leone, her upbringing in Liberia, her time in Nazi Germany, and finally, her years in the United States. She was a pioneering figure in Liberian education and literature, serving as the founding director of the Institute of African Studies, co-founding the Society of Liberian Authors, and working to preserve African names, as well as helping to standardize the Vai script. Massaquoi received numerous accolades during her lifetime, including the Grand Cross of Merit First Class from Germany in 1962 and the Grand Commander of the Grand Star of Africa from President William R. Tolbert, Jr.
Many other writers of the military era remain unknown to today’s Liberians. Several of their works were banned or censored under the military government of President Samuel K. Doe. C. William Allen, the founding editor-in-chief of Independent Frontprints Today, was imprisoned for using his writing to criticize the regime. His first novel, An Obituary for Hawa (1983), set in the pre-war years, follows the life of Hawa, a free-spirited young woman. His second book, The African Interior Mission School (2006), explores Liberia’s cultural identity through politics, religion, romance, and tradition.
After a 1982 writers’ conference, Dr. Wingrove Dwahina, then head of the University of Liberia’s English Department, helped establish the Liberia Association of Writers. Its founding members included lecturers and students such as K. Moses Nagbe, Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Althea Romeo Mark, Neville Best, Gbawu Woiwor, Dr. C. William Allen, Yei Wour, J. Putu Sonpon, David S. Yadeh, Chea, Sam Watkins, Samuel Kpanbayeazee Duworka, Moore T. Butler, David Feo Okai, Sarah Hayes Cooper, Sylvanus Tucker, Dougba Caranda, Ken Ballantyne, Swanzy Elliot, Mike Atumyogo, James Dwalu, Fatu Masallie, Chris Doe, Fredo A. Kamara, Emmanuel Abalo, Bill Harris (Bo Zeke), Osborne Collins, and David F. Okai.
In 1983, LAW hosted seminars with authors Dr. Mary Niles Black and Clarence Major, in collaboration with the U.S. Information Service. The association also organized teleconferences with renowned African American poets Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. In 1989, LAW sent representatives to a Pan-African Writers’ Conference in Accra, Ghana, attended by writers from across the continent.
LAW published many poetry pamphlets at the University of Liberia’s press, some of which remain archived or held by the secretariat. After Moore died in 1988, LAW released A Bye for Bai, one of its most important anthologies. Many LAW members later became prominent in the post-war literary scene. Yet, questions remain about what happened to many other LAW founders and why their works are not available to Liberians today. Despite publishing important works, Bai T. Moore, Kona Khasu, Wilton Sankawulo, and others were never included in the prestigious Heinemann African Writers Series, which published 359 books between 1962 and 2003 by major African authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Buchi Emecheta.
Since the end of the Liberian civil war in 2003, numerous writers have attempted to capture their experiences through poetry or prose. The most well-known of them has been Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley with her first collection, Before the Palm Could Bloom (1998). Wesley emerged as one of Liberia’s most celebrated poets since the end of the war in 2003. She is the author of more than six poetry collections and a children’s book. Her most recent work, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems (2020), won the 2023 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize. In 2022, she edited Breaking the Silence, the first complete anthology of Liberian literature—from the 1800s to the present—featuring works by both past and emerging writers.
Another Liberian writer who is not well-known in her home country but has strived to document her experience as a Liberian is Trapeta B. Mayson— born in Monrovia, emigrated to the US with her family at the age of eight. Her experiences as an immigrant in the United States and the everyday lives of common people are some of the themes her writing highlights. By the Roadside: For Liberian Survivors of War (2004), Mocha Melodies (2008), and She Was Once Herself (2018) are her three collections of poetry. In 2019, Mayson was selected to serve as Philadelphia’s fifth poet laureate. She has held numerous writing fellowships, such as the Aspen Words Emerging Writers fellowship.
Other postwar authors include Hawa Jande Golakai, a science fiction writer and clinical scientist whose debut novel, The Lazarus Effect (2011), was longlisted for the Wole Soyinka Prize and featured in Africa39. Her second book, The Score, was published in 2017, and her work also appeared in the New Daughters of Africa Anthology, edited by publisher and editor Margaret Busby. For her creative non-fiction account of the Ebola epidemic, Fugee, she won the 2017 Brittle Paper prize. Golakai was one of the 39 most promising writers in Sub-Saharan Africa under 40 in 2014. Her work went on to get featured in the Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara, edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.
Contemporary Liberian writers living in the diaspora, such as Wayétu Moore, whose debut novel, She Would Be King (2018), was published by Graywolf Press, reimagines Liberia’s founding through magical realism. Her memoir, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women (2020), also published by Grafwolf Press, recounts her childhood experiences during the Liberian civil war.
Vamba Sherif, based in the Netherlands, wrote Land of My Fathers (1999), which explores Liberia’s founding through a former American slave. His subsequent novels—The Kingdom of Sebah, Bound to Secrecy, The Witness, and The Black Napoleon—further investigate Liberia’s political and cultural histories.
While most diaspora Liberian writers have been successful with publishing their work, publishing remains a major challenge for local writers. Many writers in Liberia lack access to international publishers and depend on small local presses. Forte Publications has helped change this, publishing works such as Yearning of a Traveler by Lekpele Nyamalon, Miatta the Swamp Princess by Belle Kiazolu, Street Beat by Lovette Tucker, When the Mind Soars by Momoh Sekou Dudu, Voice of the Trumpetess by Mae Azango, and Daunting Years by Kpana N. GayGay.
Before the emergence of online literary journals and magazines, most Liberian writers’ works were published in newspapers like the Liberia Herald (1842–1857) and the Daily Observer.
The Sea Breeze Journal (2004–2020), founded in Minnesota by Stephanie C. Horton, was Liberia’s first major online literary journal. It published fiction, essays, poetry, interviews, and reviews by writers such as Robtel Neajai Pailey, M. Woryonwon Roberts, Wilton Sankawulo, Elwood Dunn, Nvassekie N. Konneh, Pianapue Early, Keith Neville Best, Cherbo Geeplay, Ophelia S. Lewis, Vamba Sherif, Eva Aqui, Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Althea Romeo Mark, Carl Patrick Borrowes, Obed V. Dolo, Ruby N. Harmon, K. Moses Nagbe, Martin Toe, Doughba Carranda, Sarah Haynes Cooper, and Korto Williams, among many others. After its closure, KWEE Magazine, launched in 2015 to fill the void, has published over twenty issues featuring Liberian writers at home and abroad.
Today, Liberia’s literary scene has received a modest revival. New literary institutions—such as Pepper Coast Mag, Sleepless in Monrovia, The Liberian Poet Society, We Write Liberia, Smiling Faces-Write Liberia, and Young Scholars of Liberia—are the forerunners of contemporary creative writing in Liberia. However, the present but ineffectual Liberia Association of Writers remains sluggish, failing to adapt to the present literary happenings on the continent of Africa, while offering no support to emerging writers in Liberia.