This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the new essay collection, Thin Places, and brought to you by Lit Hub Radio. In this episode, Wayétu Moore, author of the memoir The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, discusses the continuum of racism through generations, wearing heartbreak as a badge, and returning to Liberia after fleeing the war as a child. From the interview: Jordan Kisner: It's so striking in the book, the way you describe how your father and your grandmother were able to minimize or cushion some of the horror of the war you were experiencing as a five-year-old by re-narrating it to you, by telling it as a story that was something that you as a five-year-old could digest and handle. Obviously, there are limits to what they could do. They couldn't not make you be walking past people lying in the side of the road, but they could tell you they were sleeping. One way that I read your memoir is as a writer coming to terms with maybe, too, what we would call for this podcast threshold experiences. Of having to—I don't know if you would call it a loss-of-innocence experience—of realizing that the story of what happened when you all were leaving Liberia was not quite exactly the story that your father and your grandmother were able to narrate to you as it was happening. And then also a secondary loss of innocence about realizing that the story you had been told about what America was going to be for you