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A review by lpm100
This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
dark
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review
This Child Will Be Great
5/5 stars
*******
Of the book:
-Prologue, plus 21 chapters (317 pages)and inaugural speech (18 pages).
-15 pages per chapter
-15 source bibliography.
Whom is this book for?
I think that the largest beneficiaries would actually be black people in the United States; Liberia is a snapshot of a common culture from a couple of centuries back. And if you look at these events, black self-government ("self-determination" is the current hackneyed expression) is nothing close to the panacea that they think it is - -AND THEY ACTUALLY RAN THAT EXPERIMENT IN LIBERIA.
It could be that "self-determination" actually ends up creating something worse. As it did there (or, Detroit, or really any place black people put their hands in the government).
I really do enjoy Sirleaf's neutral, matter of fact tone throughout the book.
And it is apparent that she is quite a bright woman: she went to Harvard, as well as heading a bank.
Unfortunately, such intellectual competence is EXTREMELY RARE on the African context. (Otherwise, they wouldn't be at the bottom of every development index for decade after decade.)
Also, I don't want to minimize Sirleaf's accomplishments, but:
1. Her election was probably somewhere between the difficulty of a mayoralty and a governorship.
The center of gravity in the country is Monrovia, and it is 75 square miles. (That's about 8.6 miles on an edge; about half the size of the city of Detroit.) Liberia itself is about the size of Tennessee: 43,000 sq. mi.
2. Her total campaign purse was US$2 million. That works out to about $0.67 per person spent on campaigning. (Compare this to $22 per person spent on the last US presidential campaign.)
3. A lot of times heads of state of small places can actually become larger than life even though campaigning in a smaller place might be logistically easier. (Singapore's 290 square miles and it produced Lee Kuan Yew.)
Sirleaf is impressive, to be sure; maybe if she had had the (genetic, other) material to work with that Lee Kuan Yew did, Liberia could have been another Singapore.
*******
I've wanted to study Liberia for quite some time. (It happens that this country showed up in a book that I was reading about a mulatto child growing up in Nazi Germany (!).)
Liberia is a settler country, but the settlers were black Americans.
And they set up a society similar to the one that they left, in which they themselves were the dominant caste and no one could marry them or hold office. (I wonder why Isabel Wilkerson didn't use this place as an example of caste.)
Here is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's description:
It declared independence in 1847 and was recognized by Britain immediately and by the United States 18 years later (right at the end of the Civil War).
"This initial settler group, and those who followed, came to call themselves Americo- Liberians.
"It was an appropriate name, for this band of hopeful immigrants was far more American than African and intended to remain that way. They had adopted the cultures, traditions, and habits of the land of their birth, and these they brought with them with them when they came.
"The colonists spoke English and retained the dress, manners, housing, and religion of the American South.
"The settlers of Modern Day Liberia decided they would plant their feet in Africa but keep their faces turned squarely toward the United States. This stance would trigger a profound alienation between themselves and the indigenous people upon whose shores they had arrived and among whom they would build their home. Alienation would lead to disunity; disunity would lead to a deeply cleaved society.
"That cleavage would set the stage for all the terror and bloodsheds to come."
*******
Really, almost all of this book is old wine in new bottles: One could just scratch out the Anglo-Saxon names (a huge fraction of the Liberians have English names, such as "William Tubman" or "Charles Taylor"), and it would be the same story with any of these other perpetually unstable African jokes.
1. Incompetence
2. Corruption
3. Violence/brutality
4. Wanton destruction
5. Looting
The progression was: William VS Tubman (died in office)--> William Tolbert (assassinated)-->Samuel Doe (assassinated)-->Charles Taylor (arrested)-->Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Some themes were revisits of more subtle observations:
1. There are some indigenous people somewhere and they only get radicalized after they go to (Western) university. (It was an accident that the author ended up at Harvard, and *that* was the time she felt it critical that "my people know their own true history.")
2. Seems like people of African descent have a very difficult time at statecraft. And all of these examples fall apart in the same way, be it in a majority black region in US or Liberia. Flint or Lagos: Essentially, whatever it is starts with goodwill and degenerates into a racketeering operation (this is on the part of the government) or come outright looting and destruction (on the part of the citizens). Or, even the African peacekeeper from other countries engage in looting (p.192).
When the government X falls to the government (X+1), usually via coup, then the officials from the former government are executed. Usually publicly (p.102). And then we have soldiers shooting everybody in sight--attacking churches with refugees and then hacking everybody else to death that survived the initial shooting (p.180).
3. The author herself notes that black Americans have this romanticized, inaccurate view of Africa, but the one people on the continent with which they have the closest connection (that would be Liberians / Americo- Liberians), are the ones in which they are either uninterested or completely unaware.
*******
A very rich history, this country.
1. 43,000 mi² (about the same size as Ohio or Virginia)
2. Started as a series of colonies in 1820 and declared independence on 1847. Recognized by the United States in 1865.
3. Is properly understood as a commonwealth, because There were colonies established by separate US states that merged together.
4. (As of 2009) has 75% of citizens that are not literate in any language.
5. The Whig party of Liberia persisted a full century and a half after the original one from the United States had dissolved.
6. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was one of the four ministers from the Tolbert government that was not executed.
7. Sirleaf managed to survive several governments just by luck, and she actually consulted with an American - - Larry Gibson - to finance and run her campaign. (This guy flew to China and had produced 850K posters, 4000K stickers 300K shopping bags, etc.)
8. The war had killed about 250k out of 3 million people.
Quotes:
1. Liberia had been a golden opportunity... And we had squandered it. We had had so much and had done so little.
2. But things never hit rock bottom, and for one simple reason: the United States held the country up.
3. We know two that Quiwonkpa himself was shot and his body put on public display at the Barclay Training Center.
4. At some point, I knew Doe would say to himself, "So what if the United States doesn't like it? Once she's dead, she's dead." As much as I wanted to stay in Liberia, I wanted even more to stay alive. It was time to go.
5. Doe had reportedly come to the headquarters for a meeting intended to secure his safe passage out of Liberia. Instead he was wounded in the legs, captured, and taken to Johnson's headquarters, where he was brutally tortured - - beating, his ears sawed off - - and eventually killed. A videotape of his torture, mutilation, and death was quickly and widely circulated throughout the country.
6. Better the devil you know than the angel you do not.
7. I suppose that's the part of me that believes in predestination. I believe that when it's my time to go, it's my time to go, and when that time arrives - - so be it. Nothing I do or do not do will be able to stop it. Until then, however, I plan to keep doing what it is I have to do.
8. Taking a page from Taylor's book, the RUF recruited child soldiers by forcing them to rape or kill their own parents before swearing allegiance to Mr Sankoh..... After one is raped and killed one's own mother, what boundaries are left to cross?
9. In many places there were no roads at all, and I would just take a canoe and paddle across the river to visit a village.
10. The hard truth is that a good number of these young former combatants - - our children, yes - are hardened criminals..... Theft and even armed robbery remain serious problems in Liberia, and these hardened former combatants are largely the source of it.
Verdict: Recommended
This Child Will Be Great
5/5 stars
*******
Of the book:
-Prologue, plus 21 chapters (317 pages)and inaugural speech (18 pages).
-15 pages per chapter
-15 source bibliography.
Whom is this book for?
I think that the largest beneficiaries would actually be black people in the United States; Liberia is a snapshot of a common culture from a couple of centuries back. And if you look at these events, black self-government ("self-determination" is the current hackneyed expression) is nothing close to the panacea that they think it is - -AND THEY ACTUALLY RAN THAT EXPERIMENT IN LIBERIA.
It could be that "self-determination" actually ends up creating something worse. As it did there (or, Detroit, or really any place black people put their hands in the government).
I really do enjoy Sirleaf's neutral, matter of fact tone throughout the book.
And it is apparent that she is quite a bright woman: she went to Harvard, as well as heading a bank.
Unfortunately, such intellectual competence is EXTREMELY RARE on the African context. (Otherwise, they wouldn't be at the bottom of every development index for decade after decade.)
Also, I don't want to minimize Sirleaf's accomplishments, but:
1. Her election was probably somewhere between the difficulty of a mayoralty and a governorship.
The center of gravity in the country is Monrovia, and it is 75 square miles. (That's about 8.6 miles on an edge; about half the size of the city of Detroit.) Liberia itself is about the size of Tennessee: 43,000 sq. mi.
2. Her total campaign purse was US$2 million. That works out to about $0.67 per person spent on campaigning. (Compare this to $22 per person spent on the last US presidential campaign.)
3. A lot of times heads of state of small places can actually become larger than life even though campaigning in a smaller place might be logistically easier. (Singapore's 290 square miles and it produced Lee Kuan Yew.)
Sirleaf is impressive, to be sure; maybe if she had had the (genetic, other) material to work with that Lee Kuan Yew did, Liberia could have been another Singapore.
*******
I've wanted to study Liberia for quite some time. (It happens that this country showed up in a book that I was reading about a mulatto child growing up in Nazi Germany (!).)
Liberia is a settler country, but the settlers were black Americans.
And they set up a society similar to the one that they left, in which they themselves were the dominant caste and no one could marry them or hold office. (I wonder why Isabel Wilkerson didn't use this place as an example of caste.)
Here is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's description:
It declared independence in 1847 and was recognized by Britain immediately and by the United States 18 years later (right at the end of the Civil War).
"This initial settler group, and those who followed, came to call themselves Americo- Liberians.
"It was an appropriate name, for this band of hopeful immigrants was far more American than African and intended to remain that way. They had adopted the cultures, traditions, and habits of the land of their birth, and these they brought with them with them when they came.
"The colonists spoke English and retained the dress, manners, housing, and religion of the American South.
"The settlers of Modern Day Liberia decided they would plant their feet in Africa but keep their faces turned squarely toward the United States. This stance would trigger a profound alienation between themselves and the indigenous people upon whose shores they had arrived and among whom they would build their home. Alienation would lead to disunity; disunity would lead to a deeply cleaved society.
"That cleavage would set the stage for all the terror and bloodsheds to come."
*******
Really, almost all of this book is old wine in new bottles: One could just scratch out the Anglo-Saxon names (a huge fraction of the Liberians have English names, such as "William Tubman" or "Charles Taylor"), and it would be the same story with any of these other perpetually unstable African jokes.
1. Incompetence
2. Corruption
3. Violence/brutality
4. Wanton destruction
5. Looting
The progression was: William VS Tubman (died in office)--> William Tolbert (assassinated)-->Samuel Doe (assassinated)-->Charles Taylor (arrested)-->Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Some themes were revisits of more subtle observations:
1. There are some indigenous people somewhere and they only get radicalized after they go to (Western) university. (It was an accident that the author ended up at Harvard, and *that* was the time she felt it critical that "my people know their own true history.")
2. Seems like people of African descent have a very difficult time at statecraft. And all of these examples fall apart in the same way, be it in a majority black region in US or Liberia. Flint or Lagos: Essentially, whatever it is starts with goodwill and degenerates into a racketeering operation (this is on the part of the government) or come outright looting and destruction (on the part of the citizens). Or, even the African peacekeeper from other countries engage in looting (p.192).
When the government X falls to the government (X+1), usually via coup, then the officials from the former government are executed. Usually publicly (p.102). And then we have soldiers shooting everybody in sight--attacking churches with refugees and then hacking everybody else to death that survived the initial shooting (p.180).
3. The author herself notes that black Americans have this romanticized, inaccurate view of Africa, but the one people on the continent with which they have the closest connection (that would be Liberians / Americo- Liberians), are the ones in which they are either uninterested or completely unaware.
*******
A very rich history, this country.
1. 43,000 mi² (about the same size as Ohio or Virginia)
2. Started as a series of colonies in 1820 and declared independence on 1847. Recognized by the United States in 1865.
3. Is properly understood as a commonwealth, because There were colonies established by separate US states that merged together.
4. (As of 2009) has 75% of citizens that are not literate in any language.
5. The Whig party of Liberia persisted a full century and a half after the original one from the United States had dissolved.
6. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was one of the four ministers from the Tolbert government that was not executed.
7. Sirleaf managed to survive several governments just by luck, and she actually consulted with an American - - Larry Gibson - to finance and run her campaign. (This guy flew to China and had produced 850K posters, 4000K stickers 300K shopping bags, etc.)
8. The war had killed about 250k out of 3 million people.
Quotes:
1. Liberia had been a golden opportunity... And we had squandered it. We had had so much and had done so little.
2. But things never hit rock bottom, and for one simple reason: the United States held the country up.
3. We know two that Quiwonkpa himself was shot and his body put on public display at the Barclay Training Center.
4. At some point, I knew Doe would say to himself, "So what if the United States doesn't like it? Once she's dead, she's dead." As much as I wanted to stay in Liberia, I wanted even more to stay alive. It was time to go.
5. Doe had reportedly come to the headquarters for a meeting intended to secure his safe passage out of Liberia. Instead he was wounded in the legs, captured, and taken to Johnson's headquarters, where he was brutally tortured - - beating, his ears sawed off - - and eventually killed. A videotape of his torture, mutilation, and death was quickly and widely circulated throughout the country.
6. Better the devil you know than the angel you do not.
7. I suppose that's the part of me that believes in predestination. I believe that when it's my time to go, it's my time to go, and when that time arrives - - so be it. Nothing I do or do not do will be able to stop it. Until then, however, I plan to keep doing what it is I have to do.
8. Taking a page from Taylor's book, the RUF recruited child soldiers by forcing them to rape or kill their own parents before swearing allegiance to Mr Sankoh..... After one is raped and killed one's own mother, what boundaries are left to cross?
9. In many places there were no roads at all, and I would just take a canoe and paddle across the river to visit a village.
10. The hard truth is that a good number of these young former combatants - - our children, yes - are hardened criminals..... Theft and even armed robbery remain serious problems in Liberia, and these hardened former combatants are largely the source of it.
Verdict: Recommended