On March 22, I attended a lecture given by Helene Cooper, a J-school alumna who is currently the White House correspondent for the New York Times. Interestingly enough, this is not a position she sought after but actually one her employers pushed her into after she served as the diplomatic correspondent. Cooper is an award-winning journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal for a number of years before going to work at the Times. A native of Liberia, Cooper moved to the United States when she was 14 years old—first to Tennessee and then to North Carolina—as her family fled the coup in her homeland, which after hearing her descriptions of it, I would liken Liberia’s experiences to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
This lecture was the story of Cooper’s struggles after coming to the U.S. as she grappled with her African identity, something she ultimately severed as she cut out her memories and links to Liberia to avoid the pain they ignited. Cooper also delved into her childhood in Liberia to provide the context for her book, The House at Sugar Beach. Her book is the story of her search for her childhood best friend and how she came to accept Liberia back into her life and history.
It was incredibly interesting to listen to Cooper explain what her life in Liberia was like before the coup. She described herself as a princess with a silver spoon in her mouth who couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping alone—so her wealthy family put out an ad for a playmate. This playmate position was filled by Eunice, whose mother thought she would have a better life with Cooper’s family. Though the two didn’t get along at first, both had “bush men terrors” and winded up sleeping together. After Cooper’s family left Liberia, she tried to erase this past relationship as Eunice was left behind. Cooper described the process of writing her book as metaphor for picking away at one’s scabs. I understand why Cooper did this in some aspects, though I can’t imagine what it must be like to watch one’s uncle be executed and then flee one’s home, but at the same time I do not claim to understand how she was able to forego her identity so entirely.
At UNC, Cooper became involved in journalism and wrote op-ed pieces for the DTH. She threw herself completely into becoming a Tarheel in order to push aside her Liberian identity. After her first column was published, a piece about apartheid in South Africa, she made sure the DTH labeled her as being from Greensboro rather than Liberia. During this time, her mother returned to Liberia and her sister and father were getting ready to do the same because of financial difficulties. On the night that Cooper’s sister and father left, she went out with friends at Carolina and didn’t even say goodbye—a rash decision she regretted later that night.
Cooper chose to stay in the U.S. and pursue a career in journalism. The ultimate moment that changed her life, after years of covering various countries’ problems and continuing to ignore Liberia’s, happened during her coverage of the Iraq War. She was injured when her Humvee was ran over by a tank—her body was stuck inside and as she lay there waiting to be saved her thoughts returned to Liberia. She thought, “This isn’t right. I can’t die here. If my death is going to be in a way then it should be in my own country’s war.” It was very touching to listen to her account, though she prefaced it with the fact that it may sound clichéd.
After she was saved in Iraq, Cooper decided it was time to search for Eunice and to reconnect with Liberia. Her book is about that search and its discoveries.
As I listened to Cooper speak, my mind continually returned to our discussion of ethnicity as exotic and the question that many mixed people face of “Who am I?” Though Cooper is of Liberian descent, her mixed background provided the same type of scenario in her youth and later into her life. She questioned her ability to be both an American and an African, ultimately choosing an American identity above all else for the majority of her life. She felt much distanced from Liberia after coming to the U.S., which was clear at many points in her lecture. She mentioned learning about Eunice giving birth out of wedlock back in Liberia while she was studying at Carolina—something that revealed the huge gap between the two of them, both in their lives and their futures. “Life had split again” is a phrase she used to describe her difficulties conjoining her two identities. I hope that the scabs she picked off writing the book have healed, and I am looking forward to reading it myself. Cooper did admit to the audience that Eunice is alive and well…
The lecture was followed by an interesting q&a session that focused greatly on current political questions about Africa and stories that go underrepresented in today’s media.
