In Search of a Lost African Childhood - The House at Sugar Beach

A journalist in The Economist suggested that the Liberian civil war, unlike other wars, has left no literary legacy. Shoddy conclusion. Read Leymah Gbowee's "Might be our Powers" and then Heleen Cooper's "The House at Sugar Beach" to prove The Economist wrong. Both books are written by intelligent women from very different back-grounds but with a powerful tale to tell about the war in Liberia. I can recommend The House on Sugar Beach for those interested in Liberia - and for those not but who are looking for a good read.

This story starts out well...lots of vibrant images, and rich detail. Unfortunately, the middle and ending seem rushed. Once the family moves to the United States, the characters seem to lose their vibrancy. The ending seemed particularly aprupt, and left me wanting more detail. There were several characters that were developed in the beginning, that seemed to be completely forgotten about in the end. For instnace, the author's sister, and mother were both fully developed characters that were left out of the ending completely.

All in all, it was an entertaining read, but missed it's potential.

My college required that I purchase and read this book over the summer- they were selling them on their website for $12 a piece. I knew the store would give me a better price, so I looked around and: sure enough: a used one is $3, Hard cover. I'm thirty pages from the end of the book now- the quality of the book is superb, flawlessly so that it seems bizarre it was in the "used" section. I'm not complaining- great book at a cheap price! Thanks guys.

This woman's life story is fascinating, vividly told and really mmoves one to think about the power of our beginnings. Like many brilliant and little-known individuals, her past led her to become a great writer. Would recommend this book to anyone.

This book was extremely well written, had me caught from the beginning up until the very end!! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a story on the life styles of another country, the hardships, and all that go with it. I will most certainly be reading this book again and again and again!! Worth the 5 stars!!!

An amazing and informative true story of struggle and survival told in a way that touches every reader's experience. The reader also gains a comprehensive lesson about Liberia's history and development--her rise and her fall. It's a compelling read.

I was expecting more. Much of the book could have been written about any girl growing up in the United States (playing, going out with parents, friends, first boyfriend, etc.) The author didn't get to the part about leaving her "sister" in Liberia until almost the end of the book. Most of the book was about a girl growing up. I had been hoping for more of a story about feelings of being African and leaving her "sister" and country behind.

Unbelievable service. The book was delivered in beautiful condition and the response was most rapid. I now have time to read the book and then take it to a friend in Ireland. Thank you. The book is in excellent condition. I could not be happier. Best of luck.

Though a memoir is, by definition, focused on the author's life, Cooper's work is self-centered in the extreme. She never really answers the key question -- why did she and the rest of her family abandon her foster sister for so many years? And she presents nothing more than a caricature of the lives and society of the less-privileged native Liberian people and the discrimination against them by those of her own elite and wealthy class.

I love reading memoirs especially African memoirs. I couldn't wait to read this book, what with all the rave reviews it has been receiving. I'm sorry to say that this book did absolutely nothing for me. Okay, I did learn a little bit about Liberia's history and I was very aware of the class segregation in Liberia, but this book is really very badly written. Parts where the author could have been amusing were painfully not, in fact the Ms. Cooper could not evoke any emotion in me other than boredom and irritation that I had spent money and time on this book. It is a book that COULD have been great, I am sorry to disagree with the majority, but this book is really not worth reading.

I like autobiographies because everyone has a story to tell, but only some people get around to writing them. Helene Cooper has an amazing story to tell of her childhood in Liberia in the 1970’s. It begins in idyllic childhood memories of a well off family who were part of a big extended family, integral to local high society, local business and were very well regarded.
Her ancestors were from the founding fathers of Liberia, freed slaves who deliberately and determinately forged a free nation of Africans. From this strong foundation came a strong nation which tore itself apart in a civil war which lasted 25 years.
Helene and her family are persecuted and dispossessed and flee to the United States. She writes with detail and feeling about what it was like before and after the war and we get a real sense for the hardship many families went through in her country.
Cooper writes well and we can see, smell and hear the things she experienced.
In America she has to reinvent herself, no longer part of the privileged elite. She becomes a journalist with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and while in Iraq on assignment the Humvee she traveled in was crushed by a tank. That moment was like a catalyst for her to confront the past and write her story, and it gave her the impetus to go back to Liberia. She returns to the ruins of the House at Sugar Beach, she discovers her foster sister and other survivors of the war and the years of poverty which followed in the wake of Charles Taylor’s government.

Before reading this book, I knew next to nothing about Liberia. Just a vague sense that its recent history had been violent, and the recollection that it was the African country where Lincoln had wanted to relocate the freed slaves after the Civil War. I had no idea that its history was so tied to America -- that a group of freed slaves left the coast of the United States in the 1820s and crossed the Atlantic to establish a colony on these West African shores. By the 1970s (when the story in this book begins), the descendants of these Americans had formed their own lighter skinned upper class, arrogantly distinct from the descendants of the original inhabitants of Liberia.

The first half of this memoir could be mistaken for a children's book. It follows the author as a child, born into a luxurious upper class lifestyle, unaware of the distant rumblings of social unrest around her. When the storm of unrest breaks, however, the story is anything but children's literature. The horrors of war invade the innocence of Helene's childhood -- executions, rape, and bands of roving soldiers become the background against which she lives.

I had the sense while reading this book that writing it was a journey of catharsis for the author -- of turning to face a past that she's hidden from. It's a fascinating past, full of growth and irony. But I had a vague sense that she was holding something back. I kept thinking of books like A Thousand Splendid Suns,The Last Brother,Half of a Yellow Sun -- powerful novels, weighty with emotional depth in their exploration of themes such as war and human suffering. Perhaps it's unfair of me to compare memoir to fiction. But while I found this book to be an engaging read, I kept waiting for something more.

I was thrilled when a friend recommend that I read Helene Cooper's memoir; a fascinating story about her life as a privileged child, and the story of her relatives during her formative years when she was brought up in Liberia Africa. Helene Cooper is the daughter of affluent parents whose ancestors were free American slaves who founded the Colony of Liberian in Africa in 1820. The story is an autobiography of Cooper's colorful childhood and her many antics as a precocious child living in Liberia.

The House On Sugar Beach is a first novel, and although I've read many books that were better written by 'first time' authors, Helena Cooper's novel is a valuable read. Her writing is choppy in many places, yet she makes up for this by her wit and humorous spin on various experiences during her youth. Most important, Cooper offers the reader an interesting account of social class, status, and hierarchy among the various ethnic groups in Liberia. I was captivated by her perspective.

As the novel/memoir unfolds, Cooper is candid about events outlining details of how her life changed abruptly following the Liberian civil war of 1980's when her family had to flee to America.

If you are interested in a 'first-hand' account of events that led up to the Liberian civil war, told from the descendant of two prominent Liberian families - particularly the Coopers, then this is a good book.

Maizie Lucille James
January 13, 2012

The House on Sugar Beach, is a thought provoking memoir about an African childhood in Liberia.

Helene Cooper was born to a wealthy, and politically powerful Liberian family. Her family were descendants of freed American slaves. Her mother's ancestor, Elija Johnson actually founded Libiera. When her ancestors were given a choice: Africa or America --they chose Africa. According to Helene, "Because of that choice, I would not grow up 150 years later as an American black girl, weighed down by racial stereotypes about welfare queens".

There were basically two classes of people in Liberia --Congo people - the newcomers who were upper middle class, buying up all the property, and then there were the Country people --Liberians--the have nots. The family moved to Sugar Beach, into a remote, twenty-two room mansion overlooking the Atlantic ocean, when she was young. There they lived a life of luxury.

Helene was just nine years old when the family took in Eunice, an eleven year old Bassa tribe girl as a playmate for Helene and her sister. It was common practice for Congo people to adopt tribe people. Eunice and Helene became very close.

In April of 1980 however, the world as the Cooper's knew it changed forever. During a coup, the President of Liberia was killed, as was the Cooper's cousin, who was a foreign minister, as well as many other government officers. When Mrs Cooper was gang raped by intruders, she and the girls were able to flee the country for America.

Helene and her sister were schooled in the US. They lived at different times with both of their parents. Helene pursued a career in journalism and worked in Rhode Island for the Providence Journal, and later secured high profile positions with the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

In 2003, while on assignment in Iraq, Helene Cooper narrowly escaped death. Upon her return she was determined to return to her native Liberia to find Eunice who had been left behind.

The House on Sugar Beach was one of the best written memoirs I have read in a long time. A powerful, honest, first-person account that revealed both the class differences, and the turmoil of war in a way I've never read about previously. Such a personal story, almost perfect in every way. The only thing the story was missing was an epilogue, to let the reader know what has happened since Helene's visit to Liberia in 2003, as I felt a few questions that I had were unanswered. Other than that, this is a highly recommended memoir.

This is a brilliant memoir. I learned so much about the history of Liberia through Helene Cooper's exquisitely written tale of a childhood that was "a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa's first independent country." But this idyllic childhood masked a growing resentment within the 'Country People' (i.e., the Liberian natives) against the 'Congo People,' the name given to the descendants of the returning slaves that formed the upper class. Indeed, Ms. Cooper can trace both sides of her lineage to her country's forefathers. Most notably, her great-great-great-great-grandfather, Elijah Johnson was Liberia's George Washington.

All that changed with a sudden swiftness: a coup on April 12, 1980 violently and indelibly changed things forever. Cooper notes that "there was the world in my head, the one in Liberia, pre-April 12, 1980. That was the world I cared about, the world that I missed so much...I didn't think about the post-April 12, 1980 Liberia, the one we'd lived in for a month before running away. In my head, Liberia was the Liberia I knew before the coup." A near death experience in, of all places, Iraq shocks Cooper into the realization that the story she is chasing lives in Liberia. That story is this book.

It's clear from reading the book that this is more than Cooper's solitary tale - the Acknowledgments section reveals that she had the cooperation and input from four loving sisters and an older brother...plus one incredible mother.

You need to stick with book for a couple of chapters - Cooper's dialog starts with "Liberian English." It takes a bit of getting used to. She begins the narration in the voice of a little girl; as she matures, it's reflected in the text. It's an impressive feat by a very talented writer.

Covering the Middle East War in 2003, correspondent Helene Cooper had memories of another war; the war that tore her away from the place of her birth, Liberia. In The House on Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood Cooper wrote a gripping memoir that is not only a family history, but a social, cultural and historical account of this country.

Cooper is a direct descendant of the first black Americans who migrated to Liberia in the 1820s to establish a haven for freed blacks. Elijah Johnson, her maternal ancestor and Randolph Cooper, her paternal ancestor, were pioneers in the Back to Africa movement with help from the British government to start over in West Africa. Within a few years, the new settlers succeeded in not only building a new community, but became the ruling class with all of the privileges and advantages that came with it. A class divide emerged and the newcomers were deemed "Congo" while the natives were called "Natives" or the derogatory term "Country." Cooper's family lived in a twenty-two room mansion by the sea called Sugar Beach replete with servants and a privileged life that included private schools and a summer home in Spain. Her father was a government official and many other family members had positions of power in the cabinet.

When Cooper was nine years-old, her family took in a girl from the Bassa tribe to be a companion to Cooper and her younger sister, Marlene. It was common practice for Congo people to "adopt" Native children; the Congo family got help and the Native child was taken out of impoverished conditions and given an education. Eunice was an integral part of the family for the most part but when a coup occurred in 1982, Cooper's family fled Liberia, leaving Eunice behind. The Natives, after years of oppression and unable to rise above their station in life, decided to take matters in their own hands, wrestling power away from the Congo elite.

Cooper's acclimation to the United States was a culture shock and like many immigrants, her family's lifestyle drastically changed. Her family first moved to Tennessee where she had difficulty making friends. It was in college that she came into her own and eventually became a journalist working for several prominent newspapers including The Washington Journal and The New York Times. It was over twenty years before Cooper set foot on Liberian soil and reunited with her long lost sister, Eunice.

This was a powerful story, one that was an education for me and members of my online and local book club members. Most of us remember the media reporting on the war in Liberia and the reigns of presidents Tolbert and Charles Taylor but felt disconnected to the turmoil that was occurring. This book brought to life the cultural aspects, including intra-racial and class divisions, the oppression of the Native people, and a keen awareness of the analogy of American slavery of Africans juxtaposed against the oppression of Native Africans by freed Black Americans. The political and historical aspects of this memoir are a great addition to the growing number of African childhood war stories that have graced the literary arena in the last few years. 4.5 rating

Helene Cooper's memoir of growing up in Liberia is one of those books that you just can't put down. I was pretty groggy there for a few days after reading late into the night!

Because I grew up in the U.S. at the same time as the author, I was captivated by the stories of her girlhood. Nancy Drew, green eye shadow, Barry White, velvet upholstery... even singing Blessed Assurance endlessly in church. It all sounds so familiar, and yet, that's where the similarity ends. Guns and war, soldiers and strongmen, rapes and executions. We who grew up in the relative safety of the U.S. in the latter part of the twentieth century can barely form mental images of the scenes she describes.

The professional reviews of this book say its tone is flat. I don't agree. I like the factual, unsentimental tone of the book. The author is reporting her life, in all its glory and its ugliness. If she maintains a certain reserve, or a little distance, for her sanity's sake, she sure has the right. God bless her just for surviving.

When the book ended, I was left with the question of whether Ms. Cooper ever went back to Liberia after her visit to find her sister Eunice. I looked up her bylines in the New York Times and enjoyed reading her articles. An epilogue about her continuing relationship with the country would have been a welcome addition to the book. Here is one of her dispatches: [...]

If I could rate separately for editing, I would. Ms. Cooper's editors failed her. In another edition of the book, I hope they will fix such silly errors as using "who's" instead of "whose" and spell names consistently (Mommee/Mommy). In many places, information is repeated; in two successive paragraphs, for example, the family cook is described as grumpy and irascible. It detracts from the book in a regrettable way.

But not to end this review on a grumpy and irascible note. I loved this book and I suggest you read it along with Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name: A Novel, which is based on historical events and tells the story of a woman who was enslaved in the South but who returns with the colony of African-Americans who founded Sierra Leone after the Revolutionary War. It provides another colorful look at this part of the world.

I found this book fascinating, once I'd gotten past the less-than-riveting first section with far too much detail about the author's ancestors. A little of that could have gone a long way and a good editor would have shortened it. What is absorbing is her picture of her home country of Liberia, and especially what women went through during the changes of regime. I also liked the sections on how she felt in the U.S. as an immigrant but she did seem to skip from frightened stranger to polished and successful writer very quickly.

Bottom line: The book is definitely a good read, teaches a great deal about the history of Liberia, gives insights into African customs and evokes admiration for the author and members of her family. I'd recommend it to others, with the caveat that it is worth slogging through some of the early parts to get into the meat of the story.

Helene Cooper's gift as a talented storyteller and skilled journalist is quite apparent in her memoir The House at Sugar Beach. Her description of the Liberia of her childhood, left me nostalgic and yearning for the Liberia of my childhood. While the novel does a great job in painting a historical portrait of some root causes of the Liberian civil war, as a memoir, it lacks a great deal of introspection and personal insight.

Ms. Cooper, the privileged daughter of Liberian aristocracy does not get that the very system which allowed her an insouciant childhood cocooned in the security of wealth, is the same system that allowed the oppression and marginalization of ninety-five percent of the population by the elite five percent. By continuing to refer to the native Liberians throughout her novel as "Country people" - a derogatory term coined by Americo-Liberians to imply inferiority on the part of the natives - Ms. Cooper perpetuates some of the very attitudes that led our country into a brutal civil war, which resulted in the death of 200,000 and the displacement of thousands more.

From their opulent seaside mansions and plantation style properties maintained through the sweat and labors of poor native Liberians, to their insulting insistence on calling a grown man or woman "boy" or "girl", and their unconscionable requirement that in order to vote, one must be a landowner, Americo-Liberians replicated the very behaviors of their American slave masters. The greatest irony of Ms. Cooper's memoir, and to a larger extend, the irony of the Americo-Liberians' experience is that having escaped the tyrannies and horrors of slavery in America, they visited these very acts on the native Liberians with impunity. It was inevitable then that the untended pot (more like a cauldron) left on the stove would come to a boil.

At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Ms. Cooper's first break into journalism is an editorial in which she outcries the atrocities of the South African apartheid regime. Yet she failed to make the distinct connection between the South African institution that oppressed and subjugated the native inhabitants of the land based on race, and the Liberian one that oppressed its native inhabitants based on class and ethnic groupings - a system in which she was a benefactor. Another glaring irony in Ms. Cooper's memoir is when she's sent to cover a story on race relations and economic disparities between the black and white residents in Mississippi. Ms. Cooper is outraged by the injustice of the white residents of Tunica, Mississippi. As she quotes a young black woman in the story, one can't help but notice the parallel: "Those white people, they don't give a damn about us...They don't even see us...they drive around in their air-conditioned cars, and it's like we don't exist" (p.286). Replace "those white people" with "those congo people" and you might as well be talking about Liberia and the economic disparities that existed between the Americo-Liberians and the native Liberians.

I was outraged, outraged by the injustice of Mississippi!
Imagine that: Rich, privileged people going about their
lives, pocketing their gambling riches and ignoring the
plight of the people around them! (p.287).

Imagine that, indeed, Ms. Cooper! It is these instances of poor insight littered throughout the novel that makes the reader feels frustrated with and often disconnected from Ms. Cooper.

The tender moments of the novel are those moments when Ms. Cooper loses the flippant detached unaffected tone that is the common narrative thread and allows her readers a glimpse into her interactions with family and friends. She tells the story of her mother's rape with a tenderness and vulnerability that tugs at your heart, but does not extend that same empathy to a group of people whom she admits also suffered.
Ultimately, it is the relationship that heals. Ms. Cooper realizes this when she returns to Liberia in search of the sister who was left behind.

Helene Cooper grew up in Liberia, the African country founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. The founders established themselves as a privileged class, into which Helene Cooper was born, a wealthy internationally-sophisticated little girl in an impoverished nation. When she was 13, her world was torn apart by violent, tribal anarchy. After her education in the U.S. she became a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and then after traveling the world, returned to her homeland. The book ends with a poignant scene of homecoming, one of the best I've seen in any memoir. The story is driven by the hopes of the protagonist, and the dynamic tension between nations and races. It offers insights into human dynamics and world history I didn't even know I didn't know. I'm glad I came across it and read it. It's a wonderful book that I highly recommend. I "read" the audio book which includes some lovely oral language arts, as Helene offers colorful samples of Liberian English.

This tender memoir shows us a side of society that exists in many African countries but is seldom portrayed--the upper middle class. I found it refreshing to read about the lives of Africans of means who aren't embezzlers and tin-pot dictators or blood-crazed war lords bent on carving out a kingdom from the flesh of their victims. Helene Cooper's family certainly had its share of flawed characters, but their lifestyle wasn't vastly different from Americans in similar economic circumstances.
Their fates, of course, were very different and her handling of the impact of the turmoil in Liberia on her family gives the book some serious drama.

Seldom do we get the opportunity to explore history through the story teller's eye.

I found the book so compelling: the raise and fall of the government, the people, the climate, the vegetation. it transported me to Sugar Land.

Cooper's recollection of customs, raising kids that are not our own, taking life and death and mess and beauty as it is, hinting relationships and power struggles. Throughout the anarchy, some people's sense of honor. The revolution makes me sad, yet I don't try to understand the reasons and the book does not have a judgmental side to it. Somehow Liberia is closer now that I've read the story.

well done, loved it.

Thank You Helene for telling your story. You give many people like me a clear and honest picture of what life was like in Liberia before the war.Your story was funny,touching and yet heart breaking. I was so happy when you found and reconnected with Eunice.

Journalist Helene Cooper does a admirable job of recounting her life at her family compound in pre-war Liberia. As she vividly described her home and the goings-on of her parents, her sisters, and Eunice, you could tell that as a child, as much as she disliked the remote location of her home, the author truly loved Sugar Beach. I found her lineage particularly fascinating in that both her father's and mother's forebears had a hand in contributing to the development of Liberia. The passages about wartime Liberia were pretty gruesome and riveting. The reconnection with Eunice seemed to be rather brief. I would have liked more about that part of her life. Solid 3.5 stars!

I feel humbled to imagine the courage it must take to write a wonderful book like this. I loved the descriptions of her childhood. I tutor a six year old and the author captured the bravado of this age so very well. Instead of apologizing she tells things as closely as she can to how they really were. Reminding me of growing up in Texas when black people lived three miles outside of town and didn't attend the same schools until I was 12 years old. I would have liked to see more photographs and have them be better quality and larger. Thank you the store for the video where I could see some of the photos. And thank you Helene Cooper for this brave story.

I went to college with several people from Liberia, but never knew much about the country. The book is a fantastic read. A tear jerker (not that I am a cryer). The author did a fabulous job weaving her tail from childhood through adulthood. She clearly described her childhood and was very frank about some of the tragedies that befell her family as well as her country. I found it very impressive that she discovered that craft was to be a writer in high school (I think or was it earlier) and pursued it with zeal and passion. She has some very exciting stories to tell - who new being a correspondent was so much fun (clearly dangerous as well). I was very impressed that she never forgot about her sister and eventually made her way back home. Talk about never letting the flame die.

The book also provided great historical background on the country of Liberia. A very good read to say the least.

Rindge Leaphart

Cooper writes well and there is a strong connection to family members. Although I agree that the history is necessary for the reader to get a feel of the deep roots that both sides of the family had/has in Liberia, it did get to be a bit long in parts. All in all, like many memoirs that express the sad state of Africa, this will move you. I loved her language and different "Liberia" sayings that she shares. I enjoyed reading this book.

This book was wonderfully written. This is the story of a wealthy young girl, descendent of one of the Freeman sent to Africa to colonize.

I must say I was saddened by what I read. The author spoke of the history of Liberia and her family with such nostalgia and honor, which I understand based on her perspective. However, the history of Liberia mimics the story of most colonized/conquered countries.

You had Black Americans "Freeman" going to Africa to "colonize" some land. They get the land by literally pointing a gun to the indigenous peoples head, and of course a war is eventually fought. Does this sound familiar? They won of course.

From the beginning they saw themselves as superior to the indigenous tribesman, and treated them as such. They didn't like the fact that the tribesmen were still making their money from selling fellow Africans. The freeman saw them as those who sold their ancestors. Without even considering that they one might not even have come from what was to be called Liberia. But even if they had that their ancestral tribe might have been selling slaves as well. I think their disdain made it easy for them to treat the indigenous tribal people poorly. They called there servants "boy" no matter what the age, and they indigenous also weren't even citizens of Liberia. Once again does this sound familiar? Take over a land, call the people savages, deny them citizenship of their own country, and maintain that you're superior. WOW!

But the author wrote a passage in the book stating that they (meaning Congo/Freeman descendants) didn't have the issue of feeling inferior to whites. They didn't deal with racial prejudice, and all the issues us black folk in America are haunted with. But how true is the saying, you become what you hate. These "founders" became the white folk/master to the tribesmen. Why? To prove that they were as good as the wealthy, scholarly white folks they left behind in America. They have a white is right complex as well. Preferring white features, the author describes scenes where she taunted others about the complexion of their dark skin, and many admired her sister for her fair skin and light eyes. Does this sound familiar?

I'm not judging Liberia and those who went to Africa to build an oasis for freeman and ex-slaves. I would just like for an author, if not this one to address the psychological scares of slavery, and a system of institutionalized racism in this country, and how that affected those freeman and ex-slaves when they went about building a country of their own.

I enjoyed reading Ms. Coopers chronicle of her life on Sugar Beach as a member of one of Liberias most revered families, yet I can't help but think that the book needed to give us more insight into the divisions that brought about her estrangement from her native born foster sister and still divide Africa's oldest republic. Nearly all the Americo-Liberians are interrelated, yet Cooper does not once mention Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose former husband was raised by the Coopers and who became in her own right the first woman elected to the Presidency of an African nation. Does Sirleaf extroardinary journey not matter to Cooper because Sirleaf was a native born member of the elite and not an Americo despite the common time frame of her story. Madame Sirleaf makes the same mistake in her recent book as well when she does not mention once the name of Angie Brooks Randolph the most revered and accomplished Liberian woman of her time before the coup in 1980 that fought so hard to rewrite the wrongs of the past. Does Angie Brooks not matter to Sirleaf because her story may diminish the accomplishments of Sirleafs claims as Liberias most phenomenal woman. Liberians have a rich heritage as Africas oldest republic yet the trauma they endured over the last 25 years, as a failed state, and their attempt to correct the ugliness of the past, seems to have given them amnesia when it comes to telling their own story. Liberian elites still want to decide who is important and who isn't. By not mentioning these important figures that have shaped their lives, their books show a scholarly limitation and a form of ethnocentrism that they must put behind them if their works are too truely inspire the next generation of scholars.

This book is definitely worth reading. It gives a fascinating insight into Liberian culture, and a great story is told in a format that reads like a novel. Cooper's writing seems generally honest, and you don't turn the final page feeling that she painted herself as a hero. I was, however, left with several unanswered questions. Some of the book seemed overly detailed while other parts were so vague that they lacked believability.

Early in the book, Cooper describes character after character. Many of these people add little to the story, and I came away with the sense that she just wanted to give "shout outs" to friends and relatives.

The next portion of the book that had me a little perplexed was the portion about her journalism career. It was as though she flipped a switch and transformed from a shy, scared girl to an outgoing, ambitious reporter. While the career story was in some ways inspiring, I got the sense that she was repeating a narrative that had been glorified and told repeatedly over her journalism career (no doubt in many job interviews). It bordered on corny.

And of course there is Eunice, the most sympathetic character in the book. I was constantly upset with Cooper and the rest of her family for not doing more to help. I would be very interested to hear Eunice's take on the book, as it seems that the Cooper family abandoned her for good.

I thank Helene Cooper for writing the book. She is a brilliant author, and clearly she has a very interesting life story. It is certainly cannot be easy to make public such a personal story.

I REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK AND HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ANYONE THAT DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT THE HISTORY OF LIBERIA. HELENE COOPER NOT ONLY GIVES HISTORY AND A LOT OF INSIGHT INTO WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE A "CONGO" PERSON BUT ALSO WHAT IT IS TO BE A "COUNTRY" PERSON IN LIBERIA AND WHAT THE TITLES MEANT. THE FACT THAT YOU WERE BORN IN LIBERIA DID NOT MEAN AS MUCH AS WHO YOUR ANCESTORS WERE.

I LOVE HER HONESTY AND OPENESS ABOUT HER FEELINGS OF BEING A LIBERIAN BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE LIBERIAN CIVIL WAR.

THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE BOOK FOR ME WAS THE LOVE THAT SHE HAD FOR HER "ADOPTED" COUNTRY PERSON SISTER EUNICE AND HER QUEST TO FIND AND RECONNECT WITH HER. HELENE DISCOVERED THAT YOU COULD TAKE THE GIRL OUT OF LIBERIA BUT YOU COULD NOT TAKE THE LIBERIA OUT OF THE GIRL.

I laughed, cried, and read aloud to my family throughout my reading of this book. It was as if being there in Liberia with the author. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, during the years that Ms. Cooper was a toddler, I lived with "Country" people in a village not too far from Sugar Beach. On a few occasions I went to town and shopped and also went to the little ice cream place. Did not really know any upper-class Liberians, but heard their family announcements, etc., on my next door neighbors' radio. I also heard the "side" and history of Liberia according to the villagers - not according to the Americo-Liberians (as Peace Corps called people like the Coopers). This book was so completely real,and familiar to me, however. It made me relive my joys and good times of life in that now so far away time and place. It also brought up the ever-present grief I experience from afar for Liberia, for the war tragedies, the people I knew who suffered, and died, as well as the tremendous relief when the war was over. I am so happy that there is such a well written book out now, to tell people about what has happened in Liberia, and to show who Liberians are. When I taught 4th grade there, I taught that it was a land where peace-making was an art (which was from a similar comment that one villager made to me); that is how we thought of the Liberian skills at "making palaver." In the end, this art WAS a success, due to the Liberian women, primarily,and now to their great President, Ellen Sirleaf. Considering Liberia as my home away from home, and with continuing close relationships with Liberians who are "family", I know that the sequence of events there are a real and ever-effecting part of my life, and I therefore feel an urgency to say that unless a people keep a close watch, maintain fairness for all, dreadful forces can become uncontrolable in the blink of an eye in a peaceful country where peace is taken for granted. We, in the U.S. also have our threatening dark side and animosities. We must now actively, in a positive and continually peaceful way, protect our own super-corporation-threatened democracy before inequity and dissatisfaction with that situation takes our own nation into chaos.