Quarter 2, Post 3

The House at Sugar Beach takes place when the main character, Helene, is almost eight. I have forgotten, really what it's like to be that age and this is a great reminder. In my reading for this week, Cooper describes her fascination and fear of death. She explains how she would keep repeating, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take" (23). Saying this gives her a sense of security, but it seems to help her somewhat. Death seems like an odd and mature subject for a young girl to fret about, but as you keep reading it becomes obvious why she is worried about death. In Helene's house there are many precious things because she comes from such a upper class family, things like ivory and jewels. Since they have all this amazing treasures, rouges come in at night and steel from the house. This must be very traumatizing for Helene, knowing that she is upstairs in bed while dangerous people are only a few floors below. I can't imagine how I would react to that. Helene becomes very scared and starts making stories up about the rouges. She decides, "after the rouges' third visit, I realized the rouges were actually heartmen...they weren't coming for ivory and paintings. They wanted me!" (24). Since she is only seven, Helene has a huge imagination and must be very scared, so this her way of rationalizing what she doesn't understand. With this stress and burden on her there is no way she can live normally, I know I wouldn't be able to.

Quarter 2, Post 2

My reading this week for The House at Sugar Beach explains the lineage of Helene, the main character. Since it is an auto-biography it's in first person and as Cooper talks about her amazing family history she writes it as if it is nothing and very matter of faculty. She talks about one of her less accomplished relatives like this, "Cecil Dennis, the minister of foreign affairs, was my cousin, although we called him Uncle Cecil" (12). Cooper is related to these amazing historic figures of Liberia, but show that her eight-year old self doesn't see them as anything but aunts and uncles. The position that Helene is in is like being somehow related to all four of America's founding fathers. Or as Cooper describes it, "Daddy had clout, but Mommee ruled Sugar Beach" (13). It's very interesting to view the royal class from the perspective of a young girl when the royal class is all she knows.

Quater 2, Post 1

This quarter I'm reading The House at Sugar Beach for my outside reading. It's an autobiography by Helene Cooper who's, "family and the rest of the descendants of the freed American slaves who founded Liberia in 1822" (Cooper 6). In the start of the book the first thing that I noticed that there was a lot of division in the story. First, by gender. Cooper talks about their guard sleeping in the "boy's house" (5). She references again later. This seemed strange to me, to have have separate houses for the genders. It might have something to do with them being in another country with different customs and culture. Another part that could play into it is the time this book takes place. Helene is growing up in 1980 and 1970. Although we saw women as equals in America, it was not the same around the world. That's not the only separation, she mentions how when the freed slaves moved here the natives called them "Congo people" and how the freed slaves called the natives "Country people." The huge amount of separation in the book seems like it will lead to conflicts further along in the book. Especially the division between the two kinds of people. If they don't get along and still live in the same place, there will be a lot of tension.