The House at Sugar Beach
In this intensely intimate memoir, nominee for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award, journalist Helene Cooper investigates the violent past of her native nation Liberia and the ramifications of the 1980 military takeover.
Helene Cooper is "Congo," a descendant of two Liberian dynasties that may be traced back to the first ship of freemen to sail from New York to Monrovia in 1820. Helene was raised at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room seaside home. She grew up with maids, fancy automobiles, a property in Spain, and a farmhouse in the countryside. It was also an African childhood, with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee, among other things. The Coopers took in a foster kid when Helene was eight years old, which was a regular practice among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, became known as "Mrs. Cooper's daughter" all of a sudden.
For years, the Cooper sisters—Helene, Marlene, and Eunice—were oblivious to the trappings of money and privilege. Liberia, on the other hand, was like an unattended pot of boiling water on the stove. A squad of soldiers conducted a coup d'état on April 12, 1980, assassinating President William Tolbert and killing his government. The Coopers, as well as the whole Congo class, were now being pursued, and they were being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. Helene, Marlene, and their mother escaped Sugar Beach, then Liberia, for America after a violent daylight attack by a ragged group of soldiers. Eunice was left behind.
Helene sought to fit in as an American adolescent half a globe away. She discovered her passion for journalism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and went on to work for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times as a reporter. As Liberia plunged into war-torn, third-world horror, she reported from every corner of the globe—except Africa.
Helene was persuaded that Liberia—and Eunice—could no longer wait after a near-death encounter in Iraq in 2003. The House at Sugar Beach talks of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor, at once a very personal memoir and an assessment of a violent and stratified country. It's also a narrative of Helene Cooper's lengthy journey home.
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