Bai T. Moore

Bai Tamia Johnson Moore

Liberian Writer, Folklorist, and Essayist

Family Name: Moore Given Name: Bai T. J. Date: 1916-1988 Gender: Male Country: Liberia

Selected Works Where there are no dates, works are ordered alphabetically

Publications o The Money Doubler [Novel, 1976] o Liberian Writing [Academic Literature, 1970] o Murder in the Cassava Patch [Novel, 1963] o Ebony Dust [Poetry, 1962] o Chips from the African story tree

Profiles

MOORE, Bai T(amia) J(ohnson) (1916-1988), Liberian poet, novelist, folklorist, and essayist, was born in Dimeh, northwest of Monrovia, and originally trained as an agriculturist at the Virginia Union University, USA, from where he returned in 1941 as an administrator in the Liberian civil service. After a brief secondment to UNESCO, during which he served in the organization's education programme within Liberia itself, he joined the government of President William S. Tubman as an under-secretary of state for cultural affairs. Moore's poetry first appeared in Echoes from the Valley: Being Odes and Other Poems, which he co-edited with Ronald T. Dempster and T. H. Carey (1947). His main work includes a volume of poetry, Ebony Dust (1962), a novella, Murder in the Cassava Patch (1963), which concerns a man betrayed by a lover (reproduced in Liberian Writing, 1970), with an introduction by President Tubman, and a popular novel, The Money Doubler (1976). He also contributed a story to Four Stories by Liberian Writers, edited by Wilton Sankawulo (1980). With Jangaba Johnson he published a collection of Liberian folktales, Chips from the African Story Tree.