LIBERIA

THE HOUSE ON SUGAR BEACH - IN SEARCH OF A LOST AFRICAN CHILDHOOD

BY HELENE COOPER

THE HOUSE ON SUGAR BEACH is a non-fiction memoir by Helene Cooper, about her childhood in Liberia, a small coastal country in West Africa and Africa’s oldest republic. Established in 1822, the country was founded by freed African-American slaves, who left the United States (with the support of the American Colonization Society who helped acquire the land) and traveled back to Africa to reestablish a home for themselves as free men and women. Of course, finding the land to claim as their own meant it had to be taken from someone else (at a cost of $300 according to this book) and this led to conflict with the native “Country” people. The Americo-Liberians established themselves as a kind of colonial ruling class and ran the government until a military coup in 1980 tore the government and ultimately the country apart. Cooper’s family were descendants of the original founders and part of this ruling elite. Their privilege and ultimate downfall is the subject of Cooper’s fascinating memoir.

Cooper’s memoir opens on the halcyon days of a childhood spent with privilege and wealth. Large comfortable homes, private school, multiple servants, including a driver, a second home and summer holidays in Spain. Her family is large and loving with impeccable credentials. Both her parents were descendants of two of the original families who arrived on the boats from the U.S. to establish Liberia as free men. These families established a government and a society with themselves as the upper class. Cooper writes an honest story that provides a detailed view of life in Liberia from within the ivory tower of the ruling classes. A life that was forever changed, in an devastating uprising that destroyed the world Helene and her family knew.

Helene Cooper’s story is that much more remarkable because she is an extremely accomplished journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and as the White House correspondent for the New York Times. It was while covering the Iraq war and being involved in a near fatal Humvee/tank accident, that Cooper began to see her way back to Liberia.

“And at that moment, as I lay in the sand in the desert, my chem suit soaked with what turned out to be oil, not blood, I thought of Liberia. I shouldn’t die here, I thought. What a stupid place to die. What a stupid war to die in. If I’m going to die in a war, it should be in my own country. I should die in a war in Liberia.”

Nearly three decades after fleeing Liberia, Helene finally returns to her home country to face the trauma and pain of what she lost when she left. THE HOUSE ON SUGAR BEACH manages to be both a personal memoir and a journalistically-sound investigation into the history and present of Liberia.