Place and Privilege in Helene Cooper’s The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

This chapter explores place and privilege in Helene Cooper’s memoir The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (2009), which centres on life in Liberia and in the United States. The memoir largely revolves around the political upheavals taking place in Liberia, beginning with the coup in 1980. Place is emphasized through the affluent childhood home at Sugar Beach and the relationship Cooper and her family have not only to Liberia, but also to the United States to which they relocate after the coup. The historical relationship to America is manifested in terms of the Coopers as Congo People, descendants of freed slaves who relocated to Liberia. Privilege becomes inherently connected to experiences of place in the memoir, particularly in terms of Eunice, a girl from a less privileged background, whose life becomes intertwined with that of Cooper’s.