More Outside Reading!

Near where the author, Helene Cooper, lived when she was young a riot broke out about the price of rice. Cooper was still pretty young when she this happened. Although, this is no big deal to her family, it is to others who are less fortunate. Cooper describes how the violence started, "...the Monrovia police weren't quite so restrained, and quickly forsook the tear gas they were supposed to be using and started firing indiscriminately into the crowd. The planned demonstrations quickly degenerated into a full-fledged riot" (140). I can't imagine what this would be like if you were young and how you would handle it being so close to home. Also, it is difficult to understand what made the police attack innocent protesters simply because they were protesting. Cooper also feels the same way looking back at it now. She talks about it in a shocked tone. Summarizing what had happened she says, "A protest that began with some two thousand students demonstrating peacefully had degenerated into riots with foreign fighter jets roaring over the capitol" (141). Although this is horrible, it is not the worst thing that Helene will have to endure in her growing years.

Looking on the lighter sides of things, Cooper talks about growing up in Liberia and what it felt like going through puberty. This is a much more relateable topic than riots, since everyone has or will go through puberty at one point in their life. She descirbes her transformation from girl to young latdy, "I was suddenly tall. I, at long last, had acquired breats. People were suddenly telling me how much I looked like Mommee" (149). This is something all girls through and as Cooper puts it, it seems to happen over night. Cooper easily recalls her past childhood and makes the reader sometimes feel that she still is a child, this adds a very interesting depth to the story. Not only do we see the bad, but we also see that Cooper had a relatively normal childhood, just like the rest of us, this makes the reader connect more with her. She continues to talk about becoming a teenager. In one of my favorite lines so far, she bluntly states, "And during this year, the last tragic year of the Congo regime in Liberia, I finally discovered boys" (149). Again, she reminds of the problems going on, but in the same sentance she talks about what she was going through. I like the contrast of her evolution and the evolution of her country.