The House at Sugar Beach

If you've ever wanted to know what it was like to live the life of Liberian (Africa) aristocracy in the 70s (two words: Congo People), who lives a charmed and shockingly normal (by "American" standards) childhood, until her teen years when civil war breaks out and she's forced to become an average US teen (let alone, black) in the Deep South ...



then onto studying journalism at UNC ...

then on to become a WSJ and NY Times foreign correspondent...

then revisiting her former childhood home, amidst its harrowing reconversion in today's completely different, tumultuous, war-torn Liberia.

While I do agree that more copy editing would have been in Cooper's best interest, some of the Amazon reviews complain that she doesn't address the race issue enough. However, I came to see how race was not the message...it was universality of childhood and family and home.

And it was interesting to see how a privileged childhood in Africa gave her the confidence to brush off the notion of 'racism'- you can tell because she doesn't dwell on it (like the way she barely mentions a collegiate love with a white young man that ultimately ended due to disapproving parents on his end).

A lovely and bittersweet way to end the summer.