LITTLE LIBERIA
An African Odyssey in New York
by Johnny Steinberg
(Jonathan Ball, R195)
Anyone who has read Johnny Steinberg’s books will not allow this one to slip through their fingers. He’s that kind of writer. He is probably one of the only writers who could tackle any topic and find me diving in.
It started with his book on prison gangs, The Number, which I was “forced” to read because I was going to interview Steinberg, who was going to be a speaker at a Pretoria News book lunch. I had no interest in prison gangs and even less inclination to read about them. Steinberg changed my mind with a take on prison gangs that was so intoxicating I couldn’t put the book down until the final sentence.
That’s what he does. He finds something on which to hang a story that hooks the reader by the pit of the stomach. He’s a newshound of note, but there’s more to it than that; it’s where he takes the story and how he makes the reader think about a world that is becoming more and more difficult to understand.
Take this one, for example: who would have thought that a Liberian community in New York would make a fascinating topic?
In 1821 and 1822, freed slaves were sent to Liberia, where it was hoped they would play the democracy game, but that didn’t happen and from its early days, that new country was spiralling into chaos – hence the community in New York and Steinberg’s fascination.
He doesn’t just sit back and pull this community apart, he settles on two leaders – young and old – who should be pulling together to make this community in a distant land work – and yet the suspicions are so horrific that they harm everyone, themselves included, as they battle against, rather than for, one another.
One would imagine that settling in a strange land – think about it, from Liberia to New York – people would work together. But that this is not the case says something about the Liberian psyche and the struggles the people have endured. Perhaps this is what happens if people have to fight for survival from the minute they’re born. If people turned on you constantly and no one operated in a way that could be expected, wouldn’t you develop a set of skills that would counter that kind of behaviour?
These are just some of the questions asked by Steinberg of his two antagonists, Jacob Massaquoi and Rufus Arkoi.
Because of a limp, many stories ran ahead of Massaquoi, tainting any credentials he might have had. Arkoi is the acknowledged leader of this small New York community. He wants to return to Liberia some day to run for president.
Are either of these men’s dreams achievable? Why is it that people who should help one another push against each other, destroying far more than their individual lives?
Many in South Africa, watching post-apartheid atrocities, will understand how good people can sometimes destroy lives. Power can play havoc with lives, even when there may be good intentions.
There aren’t that many Mandelas and Gandhis in the world who are willing to give their lives for the greater good. We live in an age when individuals look out for themselves and their dependants.
Steinberg takes us with him on the walk as he shadows these two men in their daily lives and even travels back to the country of their birth to explore what happened on a different continent to cause people to act and react in a certain way.
As South Africans, we have to pay heed to their stories. Take the Holocaust and apartheid and you know that wounds from the past are not easily obliterated. They become part of a nation’s DNA, which then determines how people relate to one another and, more specifically, to the world.