A Rich and Engaging Book
WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose reviews "The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood," by Helene Cooper.

by Kassie Rose

Helene Cooper is the diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times. "The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood" is her new memoir about growing up in Liberia during the 1970s. WOSU book critic Kassie Rose describes it as culturally rich and engaging, in this review.

Helene Cooper was seven years old when her family moved to a 22 room mansion with servants and marble floors on Liberia's Sugar Beach. Her parents were suburban pioneers, one of the first to build on what was then an isolated location eleven miles outside Monrovia.

Cooper's legacy is one of history and privilege – both her parents are direct descendants of the American freed slaves that colonized Liberia in the 1820s. The colonists were labeled "Congo" and the indigenous Liberians "Country." It's a division that more than a century later would lead to civil war and uproot Cooper's life.
Her new memoir is like any other memoir, offering telescopic views into family events.

What sets it apart is the rich Liberian culture and Cooper's style of writing with combined nostalgic elegance, observant lightness of being and regional dialect.

Here's a scene from the book's audio version read by the author.

"How much longer until we get a phone?" I whined to Daddy on the first day we moved there.
"You're seven years old. Who you planning to call?"
"Tello 'them."
In Liberian English, saying " 'them" after someone's name is a shortcut for including a whole group. "Tello 'them" meant "Tello and her sisters."
"Ain't nothing you and Tello got to talk 'bout every day. You can talk to her when your Mommee carry you to church on Sunday."

Cooper lived at Sugar Beach from 1973 to 1980 with her parents, sister Marlene, cousin Vicky and foster sister Eunice. Eunice was a Bassa girl from the Country people whom Cooper's family embraced as one of their own. She and Cooper became inseparable in an idyllic childhood described in Part One.

That idyllic childhood ended when rebel soldiers brutally murdered Liberia's President Tolbert and publicly executed his ministers, including Cooper's cousin Cecil. Congo Liberians were tortured, raped and killed. Cooper and her family escaped to the United States.

Eunice was left behind.

"For six years, Eunice had been my sister, a Bassa girl living in the same house with me, sleeping in the same room, sharing the same secrets. We were the same, yet we were different; had always been different. In my sheltered existence, I had never dug deep enough to wonder how much native Liberians resented us. I had been shocked at the level of hatred expressed when those people started chanting, as Cousin Cecil was killed, "Who born soldier? Country woman. Who born minister? Congo woman."
Did Eunice feel that way too?
And as soon as the thought entered my mind, I rejected it."

In Part Two, the book portrays the family's adjustment to American life and Cooper's career success in journalism. The narrative is less culturally rich but the change is appropriate, reflecting Cooper's denial -- as a coping mechanism – of Liberia at war.

Then, in 2003, Cooper reported on the Iraq War for the Wall Street Journal. She experienced an epiphany that caused her to return to Liberia and find Eunice. That reunion perfectly ends this lovely memoir that so finely engages us in the author's Liberian childhood, her family and the revolution they survived.

"The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood" is published by Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster is also the publisher of the audio version.
I'm Kassie Rose.

WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose can be heard Mondays at 12:35pm during NPR's "Day To Day" on WOSU 820.

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