A century and a half later, we had a house in Spain, multiple houses and farms in Liberia and our palace in Sugar Beach. We were Congo royalty.
The author could trace her ancestors back to the founding of the nation of Liberia, and to the formation of the state of Monrovia, done almost single-handedly due to the illness of the other settlers who had accompanied her relatives. Such longevity in the nation brought with it a great deal of power; power, particularly political power, has a tendency to bring lots of money, and the Cooper had money, perhaps more money than anyone in town. Although they were respected, and a very popular family, their connections to the old Liberia and their wealth put them in great danger once the coup had taken place. The military coup sought out the rich and the influential, ostensibly blaming them for any failings in the country and executing family members or member of the current government to make example out of them. The quote explains why the Coopers were in a position of power and also why they needed to flee quite so urgently after the coup had taken place.
On Momma's side was mama Grand; Ethel Benedict Dunbar, formidable capitalist, onetime market woman, self-made millionaire motorcycle-rider, Member of the Liberian Legislature.
The author come from a matriarchal society and credits her upbringing with her enormous sense of female empowerment. In the society in which she was raised, women were in charge in the home and if they did not want to confine themselves to the home they were not expected to; thus her grandmother, a woman years before her time in other countries, was able to have a family, have a career, get rich, ride motorbikes and still be a viable candidate to win a seat on the nation's legislature. The people of Liberia looked up to women like Mama Grand, and consequently she was able to rise to a position of power without the struggles of the women that Cooper saw around her in her new home of Knoxville, Tennessee. The fact that her new homeland did not have a similar matriarchal structure was something that was quite alien to her and also surprised her; it also meant that she had a far more inbuilt sense of her own empowerment as a woman than her new friends did.
