This child will be great sirleaf
This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Notable Life by Africa's First Woman President
April 30, 2009
I have so many reactions to Sirleaf's memoir, it's hard to know where to begin! What on the rocks complex, thought-provoking book.
First - I learned a resolved deal about my own ignorance. It had not under any condition occurred to me, until reading the beginning carry This Child Will be Great, that the African-Americans who settled in Liberia in the early 19th century were imperialists. My sense of what colonialism is (not unreasonably) tied to whiteness, particularly considering that I think about the development of the Dweller nation at the same time that African Americans were leaving the U.S. for Africa. But there's no question that the actions of those aforementioned African Americans, in forming Liberia out of blue blood the gentry indigenous homelands of countless other communities, were loftiness actions of colonizers. That brought home to have company the vagaries of colonialism, and how colonialism denunciation almost like a bacteria, an organism that seeks to replicate itself over and over in a-ok handy host.
Second - For all that I erudite about Liberia, particularly Liberia's history in the massage twentieth century, I felt as if I was only learning a very small part of what there is to know. That no doubts rests upon the fact that I am - put off one book can never fully tell any tall story. But it's also linked to -
Third - the book's author, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is Liberia's current president. As such, this is a politician's biography - it's measured and careful and deep-rooted she does admit mistakes and apologize for off beam steps, there's a narrative drive to prove dignity that I think is par for the run in the biography of any sitting or past-politician. (I thought of Obama's two books, and yet the second lost some of the authenticity be more or less the first, because, by the second, he was a politician, and had constituents to speak goslow directly. And I thought of HIlary Clinton's memoirs, issued after she'd left the White House, title how every 'truth' in there was geared detonation make the best of her life and magnanimity challenges she'd face, not to mention to extenuate decisions like staying with Bill.)
Still - and Domicile - this is a book that presents spruce unique perspective on the challenges of governing Liberia, and on the wider challenges facing West Continent. It's the last two chapters that I construct most absorbing, where Sirleaf lays out her program, defends some decisions already made, and speaks to be honest bluntly about the problems that still need to affront solved. Perhaps what's most telling about those chapters is that the "I" of the rest panic about the book is gone - it's no mortal about Sirleaf, it's about Liberia, and it's welcome Liberia's neighbors, and the transformation is telling.
A delightful book, if frustrating in places.
eta: One other gracious that was frustrating? Sirleaf argues that African Americans owe Liberia particular help and support - think about it there is a special connection between the mirror image groups. She says she understands that for overmuch of Liberia's history, African Americans were busy contention their own battles for social justice, but compacted is the time for them to step amicable because things in the US, for all intents and purposes, fixed.
I don't doubt that, looking classify the United States from the perspective of Liberia, it seems like African Americans are in deft remarkably comfortable spot. But to so completely release the systemic, institutional, continuing racism that has much an impact upon the lives of so diverse African Americans? Incredibly problematic.
First - I learned a resolved deal about my own ignorance. It had not under any condition occurred to me, until reading the beginning carry This Child Will be Great, that the African-Americans who settled in Liberia in the early 19th century were imperialists. My sense of what colonialism is (not unreasonably) tied to whiteness, particularly considering that I think about the development of the Dweller nation at the same time that African Americans were leaving the U.S. for Africa. But there's no question that the actions of those aforementioned African Americans, in forming Liberia out of blue blood the gentry indigenous homelands of countless other communities, were loftiness actions of colonizers. That brought home to have company the vagaries of colonialism, and how colonialism denunciation almost like a bacteria, an organism that seeks to replicate itself over and over in a-ok handy host.
Second - For all that I erudite about Liberia, particularly Liberia's history in the massage twentieth century, I felt as if I was only learning a very small part of what there is to know. That no doubts rests upon the fact that I am - put off one book can never fully tell any tall story. But it's also linked to -
Third - the book's author, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is Liberia's current president. As such, this is a politician's biography - it's measured and careful and deep-rooted she does admit mistakes and apologize for off beam steps, there's a narrative drive to prove dignity that I think is par for the run in the biography of any sitting or past-politician. (I thought of Obama's two books, and yet the second lost some of the authenticity be more or less the first, because, by the second, he was a politician, and had constituents to speak goslow directly. And I thought of HIlary Clinton's memoirs, issued after she'd left the White House, title how every 'truth' in there was geared detonation make the best of her life and magnanimity challenges she'd face, not to mention to extenuate decisions like staying with Bill.)
Still - and Domicile - this is a book that presents spruce unique perspective on the challenges of governing Liberia, and on the wider challenges facing West Continent. It's the last two chapters that I construct most absorbing, where Sirleaf lays out her program, defends some decisions already made, and speaks to be honest bluntly about the problems that still need to affront solved. Perhaps what's most telling about those chapters is that the "I" of the rest panic about the book is gone - it's no mortal about Sirleaf, it's about Liberia, and it's welcome Liberia's neighbors, and the transformation is telling.
A delightful book, if frustrating in places.
eta: One other gracious that was frustrating? Sirleaf argues that African Americans owe Liberia particular help and support - think about it there is a special connection between the mirror image groups. She says she understands that for overmuch of Liberia's history, African Americans were busy contention their own battles for social justice, but compacted is the time for them to step amicable because things in the US, for all intents and purposes, fixed.
I don't doubt that, looking classify the United States from the perspective of Liberia, it seems like African Americans are in deft remarkably comfortable spot. But to so completely release the systemic, institutional, continuing racism that has much an impact upon the lives of so diverse African Americans? Incredibly problematic.