The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

The House at Sugar Beach by journalist Helene Cooper is the story of her privileged childhood in Liberia, her twenty-three-year exile, and her subsequent return.

Located on the west coast of Africa, modern day Liberia was founded in 1821 by freed slaves from the United States and their white supporters from the American Colonization Society. At that time, a number of leaders in the U.S. felt that freed blacks and enslaved blacks were incompatible in the same country. Their solution was to resettle the freed blacks in Africa. The first ship embarked for Africa in 1820 with Ms. Cooper’s ancestor Elijah Johnson on board.

All good intentions aside, there was a major impediment to the success of this grandiose plan.  Liberia and other countries in West Africa were already occupied –by Africans- many of whom participated in the slave trade. The Africans were less than enthusiastic about taking in freed blacks.  After almost two years of searching for refuge, the representatives of the American Colonization Society finally forced (at gunpoint) the natives of Liberia to accept the settlers.

The predominately light-skinned freed blacks, henceforth known as Congo People, soon dominated the political, cultural, and economic life of Liberia.

150 years later, Helene Cooper, a bona fide member of the Congo ruling class, grew up in a groovy modern mansion by the sea. When she was eight, her parents took in a foster child from a poor native family, Eunice, to keep her company.

Eunice and Helene were inseparable until the revolution in 1980 when the oppressed natives staged a coup d’état. Forced to flee the country for the U.S., the Coopers left Eunice behind. In 2003, Helene returned to Liberia to find her old playmate.

The premise of this book is fascinating, as is the depiction of the history and customs of Liberia.  But Ms. Cooper, currently the diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, is a better journalist than story teller. I kept waiting for some thoughtful observations that never materialized. I am not a fan of the navel-gazing that defines most memoirs (Eat Pray Love), but Ms. Cooper could have written a more provocative and insightful story.