The House at Sugar Beach

Liberia may be famous for its brutal civil war that raged during the 1990s and The early parts of this decade, until its president Charles Taylor, now on trial in the International Criminal Court for war crimes, was forced into exile. Preceding this civil war were coups and tensions, mainly between the “Congo people” and the “Country people.” The Congo people were the descendants of freed American slaves who returned to Africa with the help of Americans and formed the nation of Liberia in the early nineteenth century. Born into privilege as a member of the Congo people with illustrious ancestors, Cooper had a happy life which wasn't that far off from the average upper-middle class child in the U.S. And it was this privilege, as she later acknowledges, enjoyed by her and many other Congo people, which played a great role in fuelling resentments by the “native” Liberians.

As an example of the significant social gulf, Cooper's parents got her a “foster” sister Eunice, a member of a native tribe, as a companion. This arrangement was actually common at that time when wealthy Congo families took in poor country children and raised them as wards or servants.

Cooper retraces her childhood in this memoir, as well as her life in the U.S. and subsequent journalism career. Finally in 2003, after a near-death experience in Iraq, Cooper decides to returns to Liberia after over 20 years and has a bittersweet reunion. It is safe to say that the book's subtitle is a bit misleading because the author's yearning to return to Liberia and search for her “lost childhood” was virtually nonexistent until the last few chapters.

There was a lot of potential for this book to have been more poignant, given the author's unique background and the significant issues surrounding her original country. Instead, Cooper seems to have written this with some emotional barriers and a sense of distance, which she does allude to in the reading guide at the end. To be fair, Cooper does mention her relative apathy regarding class differences as a child several times. Too much of the book is filled with somewhat banal details especially on her early life, a trait Cooper also admits to practicing in real life.

If Cooper could have explored several issues in detail and with less reserve, such as the tensions in Liberia, growing up with dual identities in the U.S. or her journalistic career, this would have made for a more powerful and insightful book.

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