‘Remarkable memoir’
By Lynn Bonney, Special to The Gazette
Friday, April 10, 2009
Helene Cooper had a magical childhood: Surrounded by a large extended family that descended from her country’s founding fathers, she loved Nancy Drew mysteries and Michael Jackson music. She had a pink bedroom in a custom-built house that overlooked the ocean. And when she had nightmares, her parents bought her a sister.
The Cooper family arranged to foster a neighborhood girl, a common practice in their native Liberia. Eunice, Helene’s new “sister,” gained many opportunities from the arrangement. She got to go to a good school, although not as good as the school Helene and her siblings attended. But when the family went on vacation, Eunice stayed at home.
And when violent revolution tore Liberia apart, rebels raped her mother and the Cooper family fled to the United States, Eunice was left behind.
Cooper, now a journalist for the New York Times, tells her story in “The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood.” She creates a look at daily life in Liberia — the sights and smells, the food, the people, all the elements that make up a well-remembered growing-up. She also teaches a short course in Liberian history, from the nation’s founding as a home for freed American slaves to the radical coups that continue to destabilize the country.
In the United States, as Liberia plunged into chaos, Helene adapted to American high schools and the customs of a new country. Seeing the process through her eyes is joining her in being a stranger in a strange land, struggling to fit in as she treasures the memories of her homeland. As those memories faded, her memories of Eunice grew dimmer.
After college, Helene Cooper went on to a journalism career at the Times and the Wall Street Journal. Beginning with small local stories, she worked her way to the level of foreign correspondent, an assignment that found her reporting from exotic, sometimes dangerous, nations around the world. One day, she realized that she had never returned to her homeland. She had managed to evade opportunities to revisit Liberia.
Liberia was still in the throes of uncertain leadership. Coups and countercoups were a way of life, but Liberians had adapted and continued with some semblance of normalcy. Cooper sought out family members’ familiar landmarks, including the now-ruined house on Sugar Beach.
Finding Eunice was another matter, but the two “sisters” eventually reunited. Eunice had made her own way and held her own memories of the childhood Cooper remembered as enchanted. The Cooper family was good to her, yes, but she knew they were different from her own family.
“I think God made it for me to stay here so I could be strong,” she said.
Readers are left to wonder whether Cooper is fully aware of the story she is telling. And it’s sadly clear that she deserves a better editor. Her writing is sprinkled with misspelled words and grammatical goofs that a clearer eye would probably have spotted.
That aside, “The House at Sugar Beach” does have touches of the magic that only a good storyteller can share. It’s a remarkable memoir by one so young.
Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”