Little Liberia

By Jonny Steinberg,

Book cover of Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City

Book description

On Park Hill Avenue in New York City, almost everyone is Liberian. Most people know one another; if not by name, then by face. And yet neighbours do not ask one another what they did in Liberia, for the question is considered an accusation. Many people here fled Liberia's brutal…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Little Liberia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I’ll read anything Steinberg writes for his stellar reporting and subtle reflections on transmitting outsiders’ stories.

Nineteenth-century Americans dreamed up Liberia in West Africa and sent freed and free-born African Americans there, only to receive many back in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as a result of civil wars.

In Staten Island, many settled in Park Hill Avenue. Tracking two men who fled Liberia’s wars or diminished prospects, the book finds they brought Liberia with them. Rufus Arkoi had to leave secretly, while Jacob Massaquoi had to fake identity to survive.

The men’s American experience heartbreakingly replays their…

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