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A review by gpettey19
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
5.0
5 stars for how absolutely HYPE this book got me.
Halfway through, I started watching YouTube videos about EJS and one included a clip of adults chanting, "Who comin'?" with kids chanting back, "Ellen comin'!" ....Guess who was dancing around her house for a week singing, "Who comin'? Ellen comin'!" (to Christian's exasperation)?
I have no idea what inspired me to pick this up but I'm so glad I did. It was as much a biography as a lesson in Liberia's modern history, which I knew embarrassingly little about despite a closely tied history with the U.S. and having a community of Liberian friends and students in Minneapolis.
I'm sure this glossed over many of President Johnson Sirleaf's shortcomings. But it was a wonderful introduction to an incredible and empowering history. And it was so well written; I'd love to read the author, journalist and Liberian-American [a:Helene Cooper|1163783|Helene Cooper|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1274136562p2/1163783.jpg]'s, memoir [b:The House at Sugar Beach|2643182|The House at Sugar Beach|Helene Cooper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348485716l/2643182._SX50_.jpg|2667918] soon, too.
Trigger warning in the book and below re: sexual violence.
Women carry so much internal baggage. First democratically elected woman president, Nobel Peace Prize winner, global female icon, in the middle of battling an Ebola epidemic ravaging her country, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had fixated, again, on her failure to baptize one of her sons half a century ago.
Let people talk; they were going to talk about her anyway.
In Liberia a woman’s place is in the market, selling oranges and potato greens and kola nuts. It is in the hot outdoor kitchen, sweating as she bends over a mortar to pound fermented cassava for fufu. It is in the field, baby strapped to her back as she hacks at the sugarcane stalks that will fetch the money that will pay for this semester’s school fees for her children. And it is on her back in the dirt as one, two, three, four drunk soldiers rape her in front of her crying children.
Little girls do not come out of the womb vowing to become activists for female power. They don’t spend their childhood thinking about how they will repair the indignities, large and small, that bleed women daily. It’s a series of things that multiply and turn ordinary women into movements of female determination. You’re living your life, sweeping floors at Rennebohm Drug Store in Madison, Wisconsin, when your husband storms in to yell at you in front of your white boss lady. You’re huddling with your sons inside your house at night, wondering what catastrophe awaits you, while that same husband sits in his parked car outside for hours. You’re stunned by the violent shock of a hand slapping your face, delivered by the man who promised to love, honor, and cherish you till death do you part. You feel the warm, wet skin of a brutalized, naked, hysterical young woman as she crouches in the corner, bleeding, after being savaged by the men who swore an oath to protect Liberia and her people.
In Liberia, the war turned every woman into a market woman. Rich and poor, elites and native women, educated and illiterate, the overwhelming reaction of the Liberian women to all that was going on around them was to make market. Whatever functional economy existed in Liberia during those black years existed because of the market women.
Years later there was no shame among the women who stole their sons’ ID cards. “Yeah, I took it. And so what?” the Oma said. “That foolish boy, wha’ he knew? I carried him for nine months. I took care of him. I fed him when he wa’ hungry. Then he will take people country and give it away? You wi’ give elephant head to child to carry?”
To win as a woman, you need more than half of the female vote. You need all of it.
Halfway through, I started watching YouTube videos about EJS and one included a clip of adults chanting, "Who comin'?" with kids chanting back, "Ellen comin'!" ....Guess who was dancing around her house for a week singing, "Who comin'? Ellen comin'!" (to Christian's exasperation)?
I have no idea what inspired me to pick this up but I'm so glad I did. It was as much a biography as a lesson in Liberia's modern history, which I knew embarrassingly little about despite a closely tied history with the U.S. and having a community of Liberian friends and students in Minneapolis.
I'm sure this glossed over many of President Johnson Sirleaf's shortcomings. But it was a wonderful introduction to an incredible and empowering history. And it was so well written; I'd love to read the author, journalist and Liberian-American [a:Helene Cooper|1163783|Helene Cooper|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1274136562p2/1163783.jpg]'s, memoir [b:The House at Sugar Beach|2643182|The House at Sugar Beach|Helene Cooper|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348485716l/2643182._SX50_.jpg|2667918] soon, too.
Trigger warning in the book and below re: sexual violence.
Women carry so much internal baggage. First democratically elected woman president, Nobel Peace Prize winner, global female icon, in the middle of battling an Ebola epidemic ravaging her country, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had fixated, again, on her failure to baptize one of her sons half a century ago.
Let people talk; they were going to talk about her anyway.
In Liberia a woman’s place is in the market, selling oranges and potato greens and kola nuts. It is in the hot outdoor kitchen, sweating as she bends over a mortar to pound fermented cassava for fufu. It is in the field, baby strapped to her back as she hacks at the sugarcane stalks that will fetch the money that will pay for this semester’s school fees for her children. And it is on her back in the dirt as one, two, three, four drunk soldiers rape her in front of her crying children.
Little girls do not come out of the womb vowing to become activists for female power. They don’t spend their childhood thinking about how they will repair the indignities, large and small, that bleed women daily. It’s a series of things that multiply and turn ordinary women into movements of female determination. You’re living your life, sweeping floors at Rennebohm Drug Store in Madison, Wisconsin, when your husband storms in to yell at you in front of your white boss lady. You’re huddling with your sons inside your house at night, wondering what catastrophe awaits you, while that same husband sits in his parked car outside for hours. You’re stunned by the violent shock of a hand slapping your face, delivered by the man who promised to love, honor, and cherish you till death do you part. You feel the warm, wet skin of a brutalized, naked, hysterical young woman as she crouches in the corner, bleeding, after being savaged by the men who swore an oath to protect Liberia and her people.
In Liberia, the war turned every woman into a market woman. Rich and poor, elites and native women, educated and illiterate, the overwhelming reaction of the Liberian women to all that was going on around them was to make market. Whatever functional economy existed in Liberia during those black years existed because of the market women.
Years later there was no shame among the women who stole their sons’ ID cards. “Yeah, I took it. And so what?” the Oma said. “That foolish boy, wha’ he knew? I carried him for nine months. I took care of him. I fed him when he wa’ hungry. Then he will take people country and give it away? You wi’ give elephant head to child to carry?”
To win as a woman, you need more than half of the female vote. You need all of it.