Things that make me happy

Picture by Laura Carlin in New York Times.

Most of my Saturday mornings go something like this:
1. Wake up.
2. Brush teeth.
3. Go downstairs and pick up New York Times.
4. Bring paper upstairs. Sort through paper to locate Magazine.
5. Look at cover story. Comment to roommate disappointingly about uninteresting cover story. Women and art? Eh. Supreme Court? Not getting read.
6. Roommate expresses condolences, returns to pouring coffee.
7. Settle into a chair, savor cover section, Nicholas Kristof, Modern Love, and Public Editor.

Yesterday went a bit differently:
(Repeat steps 1-4 above.)
5. Look at cover story. See word “Liberia.” Scream.
6. Show roommate cover story. Roommate looks relieved, says “Jesus I thought you had a heart attack.” Roommate returns to pouring coffee.
7. Speed-read article. Call several people to discuss. Start mentally creating blog post about this special day.

In case you don’t follow the Magazine as closely as I do, the cover story of this week’s New York Times Magazine is by Helene Cooper, a diplomatic correspondent for the Times who grew up in Liberia. The story is an excerpt from a forthcoming book she wrote called The House at Sugar Beach.

In the story, Cooper recounts her childhood as an elite Americo-Liberian, floating between Western Europe, the US, and her mother’s mansion at Sugar Beach, between Monrovia and Robertsfield Airport. When Americo-Liberian rule ended in 1980, Cooper’s mother was gang-raped and her father shot near his groin. Cooper are her family fled to the US, but she was forced to leave her adopted “country” sister in Liberia. In 2003 Cooper returns to Liberia to find her sister, although through pure literary evil we don’t know if she finds her.

There are many things I like about the article, but most importantly I think it provides a more nuanced understanding of early Liberian history. The collective narrative of Liberia’s settlement is this: Liberia was settled by freed African and African-American slaves. The settlers proceeded to create a government mimic-ing that of the US. Cooper’s story challenges this–honestly showing the oppression of the indigenous people who were living in the area when the settlers arrived, and how the settlers proceeded to conquer them.