If you have not already done so, Helene Cooper’s book The House at Sugar Beach makes you want to unearth your family history. The New York Times reporter paints the painfully beautiful coming of age story of a Liberian girl born into a wealthy family and thrust into a civil war that left her homeland ravished. She paints vibrant pictures with stories like those about her pioneering ancestors developing Liberia in the 17th century, her childhood at the family mansion on Sugar Beach and the rich culture of her people. Yet this is no ordinary bildungsroman. Cooper does a superb job of melding history with “herstory.” She offers the reader a glimpse into the events that shaped her as a reporter but most importantly as an African woman.
Daughter of Calista Dennis and John Lewis Cooper Jr., Helene was born into the elite Congo class of Liberia. She comes from the lineage of free men who struck out from America in the 1800s choosing to establish families in the continent of their ancestors. Elijah Johnson, one of Dennis’ ancestors, was a free man from New York who rode on the first ship back to Africa in 1820. Randolph Cooper, from John Lewis Cooper Jr.’s lineage, was one of four brothers from Virginia who boarded the Harriet ship in 1829. The New York Times writer Helene confesses that, “Those two men handed down to me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa’s first independent country, Liberia.”
Cooper divides the book into two parts clearly outlining the rift between her Liberian childhood and her American adult life. Most of the story’s charm lay in the crafted wit and keen insight of a young girl standing along the edge of adult world. There are wonderful moments where Helene captures innocence and naiveté, the essence of childhood. Her insights are deceptively simple however, and become nuanced upon examination. For example, while waiting for her mother, who was forcibly escorted to the basement by a gang of soldiers after the coup, Helene realizes that “There are some things you can’t even let yourself even think, or you will fall apart.”
Like a true reporter, Cooper pushes the envelope by touching on difficult topics. The relationship between Eunice, a Basa girl adopted into the Cooper family, and Helene, a Congo girl, offer one such topic. Their relationship highlights the arbitrary nature of lineage and legacy bestowed upon the elite class. The two girls share the same roof at Sugar Beach and the same experiences but they are from distinct classes. This exposes the thin line between those who have and those who do not.
In a country built on the complexities of institutional slavery, colorism and class distinctions, the tension between classes are clearly outlined. So the events leading up to the coup do not come as a surprise. Cooper notes: “Native Liberians were still angry at the Congo people. The two sides had never settled the land issue that pitted them against each other when they first met in 1822…By 1979, four percent of the population owned sixty percent of the wealth.”
Eventually the disjointed family escapes to America and the Cooper women try to rebuild the life they once knew. After years of ignoring her homeland, Helene finally returns home an accomplished reporter to find Eunice and come to grips with the events of her past. With Eunice the two women make their way back to Sugar Beach and stand in the room where her mother was raped years before. Though there is no miraculous epiphany Helene knows that “Death is more universal than life. Everyone dies, but not everyone lives.”