Memoir gives insight into slavery heritage
By Sue Blechl - Special to the Gazette
Friday, December 19, 2008
“The House at Sugar Beach: In search of a lost African childhood,” by Helene Cooper, Simon & Schuster, 2008, $25.
I love to read books that broaden my understanding of the world and its peoples. Here is a memoir that provides insight into America’s slavery heritage and into the instability of some African nations, especially Liberia.
Helene Cooper grows up as a “Congo”, a member of the elite ruling class in Liberia. She lives in an air-conditioned mansion with 22 rooms. Her family members are in business and government, and Helene wants for little. She is descended through both parents from the freeborn blacks and freed American slaves who were transported to Africa in the 1820’s to repatriate the area. The settlement of Liberia is in itself an interesting story, and Cooper includes a good accounting of the two initial sea vessels whose passengers become the base population for a new nation. It’s an exciting chapter of African-American history.
In contrast to the “Congo” class is the “Country” class, the poor and uneducated majority of Liberia’s peoples. Helene’s family adopts a young “Country” girl named Eunice, a custom shared by many other “Congo” families. Eunice is treated as a daughter; the exception is in schooling, and she attends a good, but not elite institution.
Helene’s childhood is sweet and interesting, and makes for a dramatic contrast to the upheaval of the 1980’s when coup after coup takes place in Liberia, and her family is targeted for violence and revenge. Her mother is gang-raped by guerilla soldiers; her uncle, the minister of foreign affairs, is publicly executed. Helene and her family escape to the United States and start a new life. However, they leave the adopted Eunice behind.
In America Helene gets a modern education, and accepts the new culture she is thrust into. She attends fine universities and becomes a journalist, working at the Wall Street Journal and later the New York Times. She is renowned for her reports from all over the globe, except from Africa. A work assignment in Iraq is especially interesting. Eventually, Helene confronts her Liberian past and makes a trip to rekindle her relationship with Eunice. After leaving the country 23 years earlier, this reunion is powerful for its personal and political effects. I found this book difficult to put down. I did additional research on various topics — the settlement of Liberia, the rebellions in the last thirty years, and such. Through personal stories comes understanding. I appreciate the compelling narratives and histories shared by the author.
F On the Shelf is written by staff and volunteers of the Emporia Public Library.