Zammie Town to Zwedru: A Memoir of a Village Childhood in Liberia

“I was a mixed-tribe child in a poverty-stricken village, a child held in two sets of arms—one Kru and one Krahn—and perhaps I knew even then that I was caught between two cultures.” First named Gblayee, Gesue Gebrier Roberts is the grandson of a Krahn couple who escaped the Liberian government tax collectors and settled in Rockcess, in the Rivercess Territory of Grand Bassa County. They gave their daughter in marriage to a Kru tribesman in exchange for money to pay their taxes, and Gblayee was born. When Gblayee was a year old, his maternal grandparents took him to Zammie Town, the town where he spent his childhood, the town that nourished him and gave him his earliest pleasures. Separated from his father and seldom seeing his mother, Gblayee went to Zwedru to live with his aunt Krayonor and his uncle Robert Gboe. In Zwedru, he became intrigued by the Americo-Liberians, the descendants of the freed American slaves who had founded the Liberian nation, and by their elite status in Liberian society. In an attempt to ensure his own future in that elite, he even adopted their names as his own, but when that didn’t work, he was caught again, this time among three cultures—one Krahn, one Kru, and one Americo-Liberian. Zammie Town to Zwedru: A Memoir of a Village Childhood in Liberia is a fascinating account about growing up in twentieth-century Liberia.