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

I spent the summer of 1965 in Monrovia, Liberia. My daughter was born there in August. The Peace Corps had sent me in June because the maternity hospital in Sierra Leone had problems with childbed fever. I worked in the Peace Corps office as office assistant to the doctor and nurse. In the Sinkor section of Monrovia, I went to Cooper's Clinic. The doctor was a short, middle aged man who came to check on my daughter and me one morning in the wee hours, dressed in a cutaway coat, striped pants and top hat. He was a member of Liberia's upper class, the Americo-Liberians, descendants of the freed slaves who originally settled what was, before the 1950ies, the only independent republic in West Africa. Sierra Leone, where I was a serving Peace Corps Volunteer, had a similar class, called Krios, who descended from freed slaves brought from British America, but because Sierra Leone had been a British colony, the Krios hadn't run the country, only worked in administrative positions under the British. They'd found themselves in the minority, though, with independence in 1961, and the largest tribe, the Mende, held the presidency and other important offices. Liberia was different because it was independent. There'd been no similar check on the Americo-Liberian regime.I was intrigued when I first heard of Cooper's book. She's an Americo-Liberian, driven from her home by the civil war in Liberia, who's now a reporter for the New York Times. It's easy to find email addresses of Times' reporters so I wrote to her and discovered that she is from "that Cooper family", that she too was delivered by Dr. Cooper in his Sinkor clinic, some months after my daughter.I read her book almost in one sitting, fascinated. I had this picture in my mind of Monrovia in 1965, sort of like a run down Southern town. With stop lights! (Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, at the time had only one stoplight). In the back of my mind was a garden party of the ruling class I'd seen once where the guests were all dressed like they stepped off the set of Gone with the Wind--Scarlett O'Hara gowns and cutaway coats. Then there was the scandal that summer, a ritual murder with the latest investigation news every morning in the newspaper until one day President Taubman walked in the closed it all down. Rumor had it that the VP was involved. Sierra Leone seemed to me much safer and more civilized in those days, newly embarked on representative democracy as it was.Cooper's book took me back to the place, but from an entirely different point of view, that of an upper class girl, from the "Congo people" (In Freetown there's a "Congo River" so named because some of the freed slaves came from the Congo; it was generally assumed, evidently, in both places that all the freed slaves from the western hemisphere had originally come from Congo.) All the rest of the people--those I'd heard Americo-Liberians in a restaurant once refer to as aboriginals--were "country people". Cooper characterizes life in the big house on Sugar Beach as privileged. Like the majority of aristocrats everywhere they had servants and treated them well. The children depended on them and loved them. They recognized that "country people" didn't have their advantages. They didn't have forebearers who'd come over on the equivalent of the Mayflower; they didn't have relatives in the top echelon of the government. A unique advantage Cooper recognized was that she grew up black and privileged, with no taint of either slavery or colonial domination in her past. Not only did she escape the discrimination experienced by blacks in the US, but there wasn't any colonial past which had burnt into the people that white people were superior.Cooper's idyllic childhood was interrupted when Samuel Doe, a renegade army officer, raided the Presidential Palace, killed the president (he who had been the VP I remembered as being silently accused of involvement in ritual murder) and took over the government. Within days, Cooper saw her cousin, the foreign minister, executed on television along with other high government officials. Soldiers came to Sugar Beach where she was living with her mother and siblings, and threatened them (earlier she'd explained that "rogues" often came to steal from the house, but they weren't called "thieves" because that word was reserved for government officials who stole). Now the rebel soldiers were on a drunken rampage and Congo people no longer had the upper hand. Cooper's mother went to the basement with them if they agreed not to rape her daughters.Shortly thereafter, mother and daughters were on a plane to America. Where life was not nearly as easy and where everyone asked Helene where she was from and then asked "Where's that?" Money was short. The daughters lived alternately with mother and father (now divorced) while one or the other went back to Liberia to see family or salvage what they could from land and houses that had not been confiscated.Finally after a frightening accident during the invasion of Iraq, where she was embedded with American soldiers on their way from Kuwait to Baghdad, Cooper decided it was time to go back to Liberia. "If I'm going to die in a war," she thought trapped in a Humvee, "it should be in my own country."I really connected with this book, partly because I had had some experience in Liberia and partly because Cooper tells her story very well. I was even interested in her childhood fears (of "heartmen" who'd chase you down and cut your heart out) and her adolescent crushes in a Liberian private school and her attempts to fade into the woodwork in successive American schools.

The House at Sugar Beach is an autobiographical novel (it may also be considered quite simply a novel) written by the journalist and diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Helene Cooper. Cooper is a woman of Liberian origin who, over time, acquired American citizenship.In the novel, Cooper recounts her childhood and adolescence whilst she provides us with a historical account of the birth of Liberia, which takes place upon the arrival of freed slaves, of African origin, from North America, known in Liberia as “Congos“. Family plays a central role in Helene’s life. Helene is fruit of a marriage between two Congo families: the Dennises and the Coopers. It is her father’s second marriage. The children of his first relationship also live at Sugar Beach.I enjoyed The House at Sugar Beach. It may be that I’m particularly fond of it because it was the first book I read written by an “African woman”.Indeed, after reading the novel, I realized that up until then, both while reading and writing, I had always had a white audience on my mind. It wasn’t until I read The Sound and the Fury, that I realised that the protagonists of a work, didn’t necessarily have to be white.On the other hand, as I have been saying, The House at Sugar Beach, helps us to understand Liberian history much better, leading to a better understanding of how a Liberian, an African, thinks. Also, it proves that Liberia’s history is very cruel. Clearly, the Congos (with the US turning a blind eye) created a failed state designed solely to further their interests, creating millions of ‘citizens’ without any education, future nor soul. Indeed a failed state that was also born through corruption and betrayal (the bribery (extortion?) of King Peter), an inherent practice since then in Liberia which explains a lot about how things are done in this country.It must also be said that the novel depicts life in Liberia from a bourgeois perspective, as that was Helene’s life, without there being many references, therefore, from the point of view of the middle or lower class. On the other hand, this is a story written in the first person where the aim is finding oneself: Helene needs to return to Liberia to find herself, an impulse that many readers can identify with.From a technical and structural point of view, Cooper combines the story of her life with the history of Liberia, which seems like a good idea to me. Therefore readers, on the one hand, do not get bored (as it jumps from one story to another) and on the other, it also helps them understand the context better. In turn, the scenes portraying childhood, youth or any other aspect, are very well chosen and are always exposed in a fresh, flowing and dynamic style, not without occasional humour.As for the “surprises”, something that struck me about this book (a classic among the expat community in Liberia) was the fact that malaria, a typical “paranoia of the Whites” is barely mentioned. I was also surprised by the importance of tribes such as the Deys or Condoes in the birth of Liberia, as they are tribes, which we hear very little about nowadays.Regarding the novel’s aspects that I didn’t really fully enjoy, I must say that perhaps the narrative begins with the wrong phrase when it says that, “this story is about rogues.” It appears that Cooper proposes a path that is then not consistently followed. Furthermore, the novel is certainly interesting, but curiously when it becomes more cosmopolitan (Helene’s trips around the world) it becomes less appealing because the novel soon becomes dispersed and suffers a certain loss of focus that confuses a reader who was already really into Liberia.Moreover, I appreciate Helene Cooper’s honesty when she really speaks her mind (she even says that her family may have been involved in “dodgy” businesses) and when she recognizes that she received help in writing the book. All writers who publish in big publishers receive this help but only very few recognize this. What would many novels be like without the help of the publisher?On another level, whilst I was reading the novel it often reminded me of The Shadow of the Sun, the work on the African continent written by Kapuscinsky. I often thought that the great Polish reporter had, not only exaggerated his vision of Liberia, but had also introduced inaccurate information. For example, in The Shadow of the Sun it is said that Doe and his men gained power by chance after having been to the Executive Mansion to collect their wages and suddenly noticing Tolbert’s defencelessness. This goes against The House at Sugar Beach version where the coup sergeant and his men’s intentions were clear right from the start. Also, the conquest of Liberia was not as easy or as quick as it appears when reading The Shadow of the Sun, it was in fact, a long and hard struggle. In defence of Kapuscinsky, I must say that we cannot compare the access of information that the Polish reporter had at the time, with what we have now. In any case, t’s well worth re-reading the Liberian part of The Shadow of the Sun and draw new conclusions.In short, it is well worth reading The House at Sugar Beach.

I've lived in Liberia for most of the last year and found this to be a wonderful introduction to the history of the country. Culturally, Liberia is so completely different from anywhere else I have experienced, and I shall be making sense of it for years to come. This book has helped to short cut some of the head scratching moments as I ask myself 'why do they do/ say/ write that?'The book starts in a very simple, almost childish tone as Ms Cooper begins the story, but her style changes as the hard reality of the political turmoil leads into the war and the effect that this has on Ms Cooper as a child, her family and her (often very prominent) relatives. Like much of life in Liberia, not all of these interwoven stories have a happy ending. Ms Cooper tells these stories with a clarity and sensitivity that allows the reader to appreciate the events without ever feeling that she is allowing her narrative to be dominated by pathos.

We lived in Liberia throughout the 1970's (our older daughter was in the same year at school as Helene), and this book brought back many, many memories. I was amazed at how calmly Helene could write about terrible events, and at her lack of bitterness - indeed, her understanding and compassion - towards those who murdered members of her family and tore apart a way of life. Many foreigners have found it easy to be rude about Liberia but, for Helene (and our children) it was home, and she clearly loves her home country and its people. I'm not sure how much Helene's book would mean to anyone who has not been to, or lived in Liberia, but we and friends from those far-off days loved it.

This turned out to be one of the most absorbing (and enjoyable) books I have ever read. Helene Cooper's story is one that just had to be told and is told in a clear, concise, amusing, sad and factual way that is most absorbing. Sad in many ways but eye opening to those not aware of the details of Liberian history. Helene is marvellous and brave. Her personailty shines through the pages. A must read.

wonderful, insightful, best way to really understand the strange history of this paradoxical republic

Interesting resume but a gift so have notnread. Recommended to me.