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oleksandr's review against another edition
4.0
This is a biography of the first Liberian female president and Nobel prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. I’ve read is as a part of March/April monthly read at Non Fiction Book Club group.
There is a lot of history outside of the ‘west’ (Europe plus European colonies) about which we rarely hear and that’s a pity! One of such largely white spots on a historical map is Africa. Take as an example Liberia, the focal point of this book: a colony founded by free black (and Quakers) in Africa, who built up and equivalent of the US South, with them as an equivalent of white minority and locals as ‘blacks’. Fascinating!
Ellen was born in 1938 and her lighter skin (due to the German maternal grandfather) made her a member of local elite. Married at 17 to (as appeared later) and abusive husband, in just 5 more years she got four children. Her talents together with her privilege allowed her to study in the USA in Harvard and get a PhD in economics. The IMF and WB just needed to diversify their mostly western white male stuff, so they gladly recruited her.
Meanwhile in Liberia situation turned bad to worse. Firstly, in 1980 a master sergeant (not even an officer!) overthrew and killed the unpopular president, then, in 1989, the country plunged into 14 year civil war with rape of about 70% of local women, mass murders, tortures, kid solders and crazy prophets. Liberia is one big trauma.
The book doesn’t sing an ode to its heroine, she is real, with own problems, from installing own sons on important state jobs to shifting to local patio and playing grandma, she is a wise politician who has the work done, but like with sausages the process isn’t pretty.
A very strong book about not only her but Africa and role of a woman there. Highly recommended.
There is a lot of history outside of the ‘west’ (Europe plus European colonies) about which we rarely hear and that’s a pity! One of such largely white spots on a historical map is Africa. Take as an example Liberia, the focal point of this book: a colony founded by free black (and Quakers) in Africa, who built up and equivalent of the US South, with them as an equivalent of white minority and locals as ‘blacks’. Fascinating!
Ellen was born in 1938 and her lighter skin (due to the German maternal grandfather) made her a member of local elite. Married at 17 to (as appeared later) and abusive husband, in just 5 more years she got four children. Her talents together with her privilege allowed her to study in the USA in Harvard and get a PhD in economics. The IMF and WB just needed to diversify their mostly western white male stuff, so they gladly recruited her.
Meanwhile in Liberia situation turned bad to worse. Firstly, in 1980 a master sergeant (not even an officer!) overthrew and killed the unpopular president, then, in 1989, the country plunged into 14 year civil war with rape of about 70% of local women, mass murders, tortures, kid solders and crazy prophets. Liberia is one big trauma.
The book doesn’t sing an ode to its heroine, she is real, with own problems, from installing own sons on important state jobs to shifting to local patio and playing grandma, she is a wise politician who has the work done, but like with sausages the process isn’t pretty.
A very strong book about not only her but Africa and role of a woman there. Highly recommended.
laurabrantreads's review against another edition
5.0
I have a new hero to add to my list - Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She is not perfect, she made/makes mistakes, and she is resilient and determined. I am glad to know about her through this well-written biography by Helene Cooper.
mayastone's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
“Ma, de pekin wa’na easy oh.”
This child will be great.
This book is a lot but worth reading. Below are some quotes of things that stood out to me.
This child will be great.
This book is a lot but worth reading. Below are some quotes of things that stood out to me.
The tending and feeding of men and children, the day-to-day struggle to put food on the table and to find tuition and school fees, all under the hot equatorial sun, knowing that when you are finally boxed up and buried, the only thing that will mark your time on this earth will be the children you leave behind.
- Ellen seeing her life flash by
Whether fair or not, they knew that if he showed up and said “Dis my wife, she jes lyin’,” the judge—the male judge—would send Ellen home with Doc and tell her to work out her differences with her husband as a good wife should. He would say, “Y’all go fix your palaver.”
- How divorce worked in Liberia at the time Ellen was trying to get a divorce from her abusive husband.
In dramatic colors, it depicted the original settlement of Liberia by the freed American slaves. There was the ship, the Elizabeth, that sailed from New York to West Africa in 1820. There was the palm tree depicting the African shore. And there were the people, the native Liberians and the American blacks. But the freed American slaves were so light-skinned they looked white. They wore Western garb, beaver hats, and appeared, by Western norms, civilized. The native Liberians, meanwhile, were half naked, wearing animal skins and carrying spears.
- A painting in the waiting room of President Tubman’s 8 story mansion
Ellen made sure her audience knew what she meant, defining kleptocracy as “abuses of meager public funds such as payroll padding and outright stealing of public monies.”
On December 24, 1989, Charles Taylor and 170 insurgents crossed the Ivorian border into Liberia, launching Liberia’s civil war. It would last fourteen years and snuff out 200,000 lives.
- He was initially supported by Ellen
Taking the boy’s gas wasn’t enough, however. One of the soldiers grabbed a grenade, pulled out the pin, and threw it at the young gas hawker. It detonated right in front of him, blowing him into pieces in Harris’s front yard.
- During the war Doe’s soldiers stole gas tankards from a 13-year-old boy and blew him up. A young mother witnessed the incident.
Girls were taken as “wives,” passed around, and raped by men three times their age. “Come, you coming cook for us,” one rebel soldier told the teenager, after he and six of his comrades had raped her mother in front of her. Josephine did cook for them, over the camp coal pot, in the bush. But she was also raped, four to five times a day. The worst, she recalled, was when new soldiers joined the group she was with. “Anyone who came was allowed to have me,” she said, her voice flat. “They would say, ‘It’s for you, sir. It’s for you, sir.’ ”
- Josephine is one of many women brutalized during the war, her own mother was raped in front of her.
Seventeen of the fighters raped a young woman named Rebecca. She died after the seventeenth man violated her—raped to death.
- Many, many women and young girls were brutalized.
To win as a woman, you need more than half of the female vote. You need all of it.
“When Bad Luck call your name, rotten banana break your teeth.”
- A Liberian saying
rainbowbookworm's review against another edition
5.0
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the first female to be elected president of a country in Africa and one of three female African Nobel Laureates. Cooper’s book offers us glimpses into her childhood, but mostly focuses on her rise to fame as an economic expert and, ultimately, as president of Liberia. The author does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded Madame during her presidency, creating a well-rounded biography of the renowned icon.
zoenosis's review against another edition
5.0
What an amazing book! I've never been to Liberia, or really heard much about the country or Ms Johnson Sirleaf before reading this, but I felt immediately transported there by this book. You're not just there for the politics and history, but also the food, the gender dynamics, and the family life. The attention to those little details really brought this book to life. Obviously this book covers a really devastating period in Liberian history, but I loved how the lives of Liberian people, and particularly Liberian women, remain at the centre instead of it becoming too torture-porn-y.
maggie_daydreaming's review against another edition
4.0
I found this book fascinating, though kind of horrific in parts. The story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was really inspiring to me and I think I learned a lot about the sorts of things people do when they are actually smart people who deserve to be presidents (aka not, er, actually maybe I won't go here).
And here follows my teacher-assigned summary, because why not?
Madame President is the story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president in Liberia. Ellen was born into a turbulent society: the ruling “Congo people” oppressed the native “country people,” there was terrible economic inequality, and the government was corrupt and had been for as long as anyone could remember. Determined to combat these problems, she went to college in the US in between various government jobs, where she kept getting in trouble for her angry speeches against the government. She also worked for the World Bank, which allowed her to have a safe home and a job in Washington, DC when the government was overthrown and, later, there was a decades-long civil war in which both sides did atrocious things, both to opposing soldiers and to ordinary civilians. After the civil war finally ended, Ellen returned to Liberia and ran for president. No one thought she would win, but the Liberian women managed to do something American women still haven’t been able to: they elected her, a woman, the president. She went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, rebuild her country, and get all debt against the Liberian government forgiven. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf refused to be limited by the constraints society put on her and constantly worked to make her country - and the world - a better place.
And here follows my teacher-assigned summary, because why not?
Madame President is the story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president in Liberia. Ellen was born into a turbulent society: the ruling “Congo people” oppressed the native “country people,” there was terrible economic inequality, and the government was corrupt and had been for as long as anyone could remember. Determined to combat these problems, she went to college in the US in between various government jobs, where she kept getting in trouble for her angry speeches against the government. She also worked for the World Bank, which allowed her to have a safe home and a job in Washington, DC when the government was overthrown and, later, there was a decades-long civil war in which both sides did atrocious things, both to opposing soldiers and to ordinary civilians. After the civil war finally ended, Ellen returned to Liberia and ran for president. No one thought she would win, but the Liberian women managed to do something American women still haven’t been able to: they elected her, a woman, the president. She went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, rebuild her country, and get all debt against the Liberian government forgiven. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf refused to be limited by the constraints society put on her and constantly worked to make her country - and the world - a better place.
unabridgedchick's review against another edition
3.0
This book exemplifies why I love my reading challenges; I wouldn't have picked this up without the impetus of my reading challenges and it's launched my deep dive into contemporary Liberia.
I am ashamed to admit I was unfamiliar with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before searching out books for this challenge; and as I started reading, I realized I knew nothing about Liberia aside from some vague tidbits I recalled from popular culture. (For a great, evenhanded intro into Sirleaf, this video is really helpful.)
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Liberia's first female president as well as the first female president in Africa. When elected president in 2006, she inherited a country traumatized from decades of war and violent human rights abuses; a country whose infrastructure and economy was so destroyed that 80% of Liberia's residents were under the international poverty level. And like so many other countries, Liberia had a history of classism and bias, with an upperclass population of families descended from freed American slaves and an underclass of Liberian indigenous groups.
The work needed to transform Liberia beggars belief and and in her twelve years as president, Sirleaf managed the impossible.
(There's a hilarious/heartbreaking anecdote about Sirleaf, newly elected, calling on a pay-as-you go phone to then US President George W Bush to accept congratulations, when her phone drops the call. Her calling card had run out of minutes, so her staff frantically drive to a roadside market stand to buy all the calling cards, and staff frantically scratch off the codes so Sirleaf can finish speaking to Bush.)
However, Sirleaf's legacy is complicated, and as stated in a 2019 Al Jazeera English interview, she might be better admired internationally than in Liberia. This biography, however, doesn't dig into that, and it's the only reason this isn't a five star read for me.
Author Helene Cooper is a Liberian herself but opted to focus on US politics in her journalism rather than Liberia and West Africa. Still, her cultural connection to Liberia created a warmth in this biography that I appreciated; it wasn't the gaze of an outsider. However, that also impacted the way she wrote about Sirleaf -- it had touches of being an 'authorized' biography (although Cooper says she wouldn't let Sirleaf read any of the draft). There's a lack of critical analysis of Sirleaf that I've come across in other summaries of Sirleaf's life and presidency.
An interesting reader moment happened for me during the sections around Liberian responses to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. As this book was published in 2017, Cooper's section justifying why Liberians violated quarantine protocols during the Ebola outbreak reads so differently in 2021 than it probably did in 2018. As I read now, after a year of watching people protest over wearing masks, closing public areas, and suggesting social distancing, it wasn't surprising to me that some Liberians rushed to care for their sick family members or why some were in denial about the seriousness of the outbreak.
I'm counting this read for both Read Harder Task 18: Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader and Reading Women Task 17: a book about a Woman in Politics.
I am ashamed to admit I was unfamiliar with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before searching out books for this challenge; and as I started reading, I realized I knew nothing about Liberia aside from some vague tidbits I recalled from popular culture. (For a great, evenhanded intro into Sirleaf, this video is really helpful.)
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Liberia's first female president as well as the first female president in Africa. When elected president in 2006, she inherited a country traumatized from decades of war and violent human rights abuses; a country whose infrastructure and economy was so destroyed that 80% of Liberia's residents were under the international poverty level. And like so many other countries, Liberia had a history of classism and bias, with an upperclass population of families descended from freed American slaves and an underclass of Liberian indigenous groups.
The work needed to transform Liberia beggars belief and and in her twelve years as president, Sirleaf managed the impossible.
(There's a hilarious/heartbreaking anecdote about Sirleaf, newly elected, calling on a pay-as-you go phone to then US President George W Bush to accept congratulations, when her phone drops the call. Her calling card had run out of minutes, so her staff frantically drive to a roadside market stand to buy all the calling cards, and staff frantically scratch off the codes so Sirleaf can finish speaking to Bush.)
However, Sirleaf's legacy is complicated, and as stated in a 2019 Al Jazeera English interview, she might be better admired internationally than in Liberia. This biography, however, doesn't dig into that, and it's the only reason this isn't a five star read for me.
Author Helene Cooper is a Liberian herself but opted to focus on US politics in her journalism rather than Liberia and West Africa. Still, her cultural connection to Liberia created a warmth in this biography that I appreciated; it wasn't the gaze of an outsider. However, that also impacted the way she wrote about Sirleaf -- it had touches of being an 'authorized' biography (although Cooper says she wouldn't let Sirleaf read any of the draft). There's a lack of critical analysis of Sirleaf that I've come across in other summaries of Sirleaf's life and presidency.
An interesting reader moment happened for me during the sections around Liberian responses to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. As this book was published in 2017, Cooper's section justifying why Liberians violated quarantine protocols during the Ebola outbreak reads so differently in 2021 than it probably did in 2018. As I read now, after a year of watching people protest over wearing masks, closing public areas, and suggesting social distancing, it wasn't surprising to me that some Liberians rushed to care for their sick family members or why some were in denial about the seriousness of the outbreak.
I'm counting this read for both Read Harder Task 18: Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader and Reading Women Task 17: a book about a Woman in Politics.
graywacke's review against another edition
5.0
posted on Litsy: 
Liberia has an odd history where freed mixed-race American slaves formed the country in 1847, essentially taking it over and becoming a ruling elite, known for some reason as Congo people. Liberia actually was financially sound, except that all the wealth from mining and whatnot went to the ruling elite, creating a massive class divide that broke down first into a coup and military dictatorship in 1980, and then into in all-out civil war of unending violence that began in 1989 and continued till about 2003 when President Charles Taylor was charged with war crimes for actions in Sierre Leon (but not in Liberia) and fled. The details and extent of the violence in Liberia are unfathomably gruesome, with torture, massacres, causal violence and, of course, rapes committed by all sides.
Out of the now completely broken country came Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a grandmother elected to president through a massive women's movement. Sirleaf is a financial expert with ties to key members in the world bank, private banks and financial and political leaders in the US. She was far from a nobody. In course of her presidency, the country's debt was cancelled, the economy reactivated, the violence plummeted, corruption reduced (but hardly stopped), the country began to rebuild, and Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected to leadership in Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize (along with two other women). Then came Ebola - into the capital city, Monrovia, the first time an epidemic of the disease hit a urban area. Serious predictions saw 4 million deaths coming in a matter a months.
The author, [[Helene Cooper]], was born in Liberia, and later became a member of the press corps following American presidents. When Ebola hit, she when back to Liberia to cover the outbreak and interview Sirleaf and to write this book.
I'm not sure how to put it, but this is a really terrific book in so many ways, uplifting and human. The introduction about the author's own life already had my attention. And the life of Sirleaf, hardly a perfect person, is really inspirational. It's the story of what can happen when a really qualified person is actually given responsibility, but it's also the story of the catastrophe it took to get there. I'll add that it was interesting to see the presidency of George W. Bush, a president I hate, in a positive light. And it see was nice to see Obama playing such a key role in being proactive with the Ebola crisis, sending in resources and American marines to assist, and essentially saving the city. And all of this in a country I hardly ever thought about before starting this book.
-----------------------------------------------
32. Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
reader: Marlene Cooper Vasilic
published: 2017
format: 12:45 overdrive audiobook (~356 pages, 336 pages in hardcover)
acquired: library loan
listened: May 24 – Jun 7
rating: 4½
This book is why I’m somewhat random in how I select audiobooks. It never occurred to me that Liberian history was so fascinating and awful, or that the transformation this woman represents could be so special on so many levels. So much to say. Extraordinarily and grotesque violence, 70% of women raped in a civil war before Sarleaf began rebuilding. And then Ebola. Special book, special person, terrific writing, great reader.
Liberia has an odd history where freed mixed-race American slaves formed the country in 1847, essentially taking it over and becoming a ruling elite, known for some reason as Congo people. Liberia actually was financially sound, except that all the wealth from mining and whatnot went to the ruling elite, creating a massive class divide that broke down first into a coup and military dictatorship in 1980, and then into in all-out civil war of unending violence that began in 1989 and continued till about 2003 when President Charles Taylor was charged with war crimes for actions in Sierre Leon (but not in Liberia) and fled. The details and extent of the violence in Liberia are unfathomably gruesome, with torture, massacres, causal violence and, of course, rapes committed by all sides.
Out of the now completely broken country came Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a grandmother elected to president through a massive women's movement. Sirleaf is a financial expert with ties to key members in the world bank, private banks and financial and political leaders in the US. She was far from a nobody. In course of her presidency, the country's debt was cancelled, the economy reactivated, the violence plummeted, corruption reduced (but hardly stopped), the country began to rebuild, and Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected to leadership in Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize (along with two other women). Then came Ebola - into the capital city, Monrovia, the first time an epidemic of the disease hit a urban area. Serious predictions saw 4 million deaths coming in a matter a months.
The author, [[Helene Cooper]], was born in Liberia, and later became a member of the press corps following American presidents. When Ebola hit, she when back to Liberia to cover the outbreak and interview Sirleaf and to write this book.
I'm not sure how to put it, but this is a really terrific book in so many ways, uplifting and human. The introduction about the author's own life already had my attention. And the life of Sirleaf, hardly a perfect person, is really inspirational. It's the story of what can happen when a really qualified person is actually given responsibility, but it's also the story of the catastrophe it took to get there. I'll add that it was interesting to see the presidency of George W. Bush, a president I hate, in a positive light. And it see was nice to see Obama playing such a key role in being proactive with the Ebola crisis, sending in resources and American marines to assist, and essentially saving the city. And all of this in a country I hardly ever thought about before starting this book.
-----------------------------------------------
32. Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
reader: Marlene Cooper Vasilic
published: 2017
format: 12:45 overdrive audiobook (~356 pages, 336 pages in hardcover)
acquired: library loan
listened: May 24 – Jun 7
rating: 4½