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Bai Tamia Johnson Moore (12 October 1916 – 10 January 1988), commonly known by his pen-name, Bai T. Moore, was a Liberian poet, novelist, folklorist and essayist. He also held various cultural, educational and tourism posts both for the Liberian government and for UNESCO, and was the founder of Liberia's National Cultural Center. He is best known for his novella ''Murder in the Cassava Patch'' (1968), the tale of a crime passionel in a traditional Liberian setting. ==Life== Moore was born in Dimeh, a traditional Gola village on the Monrovia-Tubmanburg highway. He trained overseas as an agriculturist at Virginia Union University before returning to Liberia in 1941 to take up a post in the civil service. After co-editing, alongside Roland T. Dempster and T. H. Carey, the Liberian poetry collection, ''Echoes from the Valley: Being Odes and Other Poems'' (1947), he was seconded to work for UNESCO on its Liberia desk. In 1957, he headed the government's Fundamental Education project designed to bring education and information to rural Liberia.,〔(Article by Tarty Teh on information and misinformation in Liberia )〕 when President William Tubman appointed him Under-Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs. In 1962, Moore was one of a team of Vai scholars who took part in a conference at the University of Liberia to standardise the Vai script for modern usage.〔(Proposal to add the Vai Script to the BMP of the UCS: Michael Everson, Charles Riley and José Rivera. ) See (BMP and UCS)〕 The publication of Murder in the Cassava Patch secured Moore's reputation as Liberia's best-known writer, and its popularity ensured that he was able to maintain his public position through some of the most turbulent years of Liberia's history. Under the government of President Samuel Doe, Moore was appointed Minister for Cultural Affairs and Tourism, a position that he held at the time of his sudden death at the age of seventy-one. After a state funeral at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion, attended by cultural troupes from the Dey, Gola, Vai, Kpelle, Gbandi, and Gio tribes, Bai T. Moore was finally laid to rest in his native Dimeh. Wilton Sankawulo wrote: " The best tribute we can pay to the memory of Bai Tee is making our culture part of our daily life, for culturally we are dressed in borrowed robes. Unless we replace these alien garments with ones of our own making, we will continue failing in all our attempts to build a society that can meet our needs and aspirations." 〔(Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bai T. Moore」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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