A review by mayastone
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper

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.

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