Review: The House at Sugar Beach

Feeling foolish, I walked back into the hotel and had coffee. I stole a plate, with some breakfast rolls, for Ishmael [her driver], as though I could single-handedly, and in one morning, make up for the past 175 years.

1. Americo-Liberians are lighter skinned than indigenous Liberians because in the 1820s many freed slaves were mulattos—the descendants of white plantation owners and black slaves. These were the men and women who made up most of the group that took the ACS trans-Atlantic trek.
2. Some of those killed during the administration of former President Samuel Doe—the first indigenous leader of Liberia—were dumped in the same mass grave as the indigenous Liberians former President Tolbert had killed during the 1979 rice riot. I think this is symbolic of the way Doe replicated unequal power structures that he had criticized Tolbert for using.

Helene’s story-telling style is mostly dispassionate. I constantly was thinking of a visit several years ago to Auschwitz. The tour guide objectively described murders and torture, never once betraying her thoughts or using a subjective word. At the end of the tour she said her style was intentional. People don’t need to be told whether something was bad or good. Showing can be more powerful than telling.

I agree—partly. At points, like this book’s reviewer in the Washington Post, I yearned for a bit more reflection. Mostly because when Helene does offer some, it sticks with you for a while.

Two examples of this. First, Helene describes her reaction to a change Doe instituted for national news broadcasts:

Toward the end of the broadcast, a news reader would announce: “And now for the news in siiiiiiimple English.” Then a Country man came on and read the news in Liberian English.

That sent Congo People into peals of laughter. I laughed when Marlene explained it to me over the phone, but my laughter was nervous and tinged with a little guilt. The politically correct lens of my American college campus dictated that I not make fun of people for not having the means to acquire an education. That lens said I was partly to blame. What kind of place had my ancestors built, that we took it for granted that so many people weren’t educated enough to understand proper English, the national language?

Second, talking about the night her mother was gang-raped by Doe’s soldiers, Helene says, “I was filled with an anger so intense it boiled through me. I wanted to hurt those soldiers who had hurt my mother. I wanted to watch them bleed, I wanted to sit back and watch them die, slowly, aware that they were dying.”

I rarely hear Liberians articulate this kind of anger, yet it seems inconceivable to me that everyone doesn’t feel this way.

My laugh-out-loud moment during the book came when Helene reminisces about a decidedly Liberian Christmas:

And finally, it was over and the drums quieted and we stopped dancing and Santa Claus bent down and gently put down Marlene and Palma, who both clung to his stilts, not wanting to let go. And Santa Claus turned to Daddy.

“Where’ ma Christmas?” he demanded.

Daddy reached into his pocket and gave him a five-dollar bill.

Returning to Liberia after the war ends, Helene seems uncomfortable with the reverence shown to her. She notes that Eunice’s birth mother calls Eunice “Mrs. Cooper’s Daughter.” At another point, Helene is taken aback when Eunice calls her “ma.”

And by using the word stepchild to describe Eunice, intentionally or unintentionally Helene draws parallels between her family’s relationship with Eunice and America’s relationship with Liberia. Although the analogy can only be pushed so far—Eunice says she didn’t feel like a stepchild—on some level both Eunice and Liberia were abandoned.

This memoir will be a page-turner for anyone with even a passing interest in Liberia. I finished the book on Sunday morning in Minneapolis. I was attending a church service that day, but arrived super early, characteristic of my chronic inability to properly estimate travel time. I found an empty Mexican paneria, purchased a roll for 65 cents, and settled into one of three booths to munch and read. I quickly was engrossed. Two hours later I looked up. The paneria was packed and people were waiting to sit at the booth I was hogging. I went outside, sat on the sidewalk (Minneapolis does not seem to be big on benches), and finished the book a half hour later.

My suggestion to Simon and Schuster: Get Eunice to write her memoir, too. It would be fascinating to see how she understood events Helene described, and how she saw her relationship with the Coopers.