Reviews of African Literature
For those who have lived and worked in Liberia, or for those who are doing so at present, Blue Clay People will seem very close to home and familiar. Many expats (and also a good handful of Liberians) can see themselves in the character of Powers, his thoughts and his experiences will be theirs. Powers…
Despite a number of negative consequences, Powers also discovers that these same development projects are sometimes capable of providing real help and happiness to local communities. William discovers this by delving deeper into Liberian society, which in turn will allow him to discover various fundamental patterns of this culture such as the importance of the…
Blue Clay People tells the story of William Powers, a North American aid worker in Liberia back in 1999. Powers lands in the African country as a member of the NGO Catholic Relief Services (CRS) with the task of fighting against poverty and saving the rainforest in a country gripped by the peril of a…
Cooper goes on to express her appreciation for the support and assistance received. Referring to six friends of her, she says “the six of them helped me figure out what I wanted to write, how I wanted to write it, and how to live with myself after I wrote it” (“my Liberian friends and cousins…
Doe’s government had never been stable and had always run the risk of being overthrown at any time, until the point that there was an attempted coup by Quiwonkpa, Doe’s former friend and comrade in arms. Samuel Doe came to be arrested but he managed to bribe the soldier who captured him and ended up…
Going back to Helene Cooper’s life, it became considerably more complicated when the Liberian civil war broke out, a factor that forced her to move to the United States, specifically to Knoxville, Tennessee, where her status changed radically, becoming a second-class citizen and realising for the first time that she was black (an Irish boyfriend…
Helene Cooper tells us that she had ancestors on the colonisation ships coming from the United States, specifically Elijah Johnson, a man with a lot of character and a bit of a rebel, who came on one of those ships that arrived at the Liberian coast to settle there. Shortly after the “deal” or rather…
The House at Sugar Beach is an autobiographical novel (it may also be considered quite simply a novel) written by the journalist and diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Helene Cooper. Cooper is a woman of Liberian origin who, over time, acquired American citizenship. In the novel, Cooper recounts her childhood and adolescence whilst…
Why Nobody Knows When He Will Die is a book that consists of ten stories on different subjects of everyday African and Liberian reality, many of which can be extrapolated to the rest of the world (bearing in mind cultural differences). The stories are written in the third person and are narrated in a precise,…
Murder in the Cassava Patch is a very good african literature work, and tells the story of a toxic relationship that ends in murder. Gortokai, the main character, is madly in love with Tene, a coquettish woman who likes to string along several men at the same time. Kai (short for Gortokai) is not at all aware…