He'd gone to Tuskegee and come back to Liberia and spotted her at a party or something. I will say that she was married at 17 to a 24-year-old, much more mature. Can you just talk a little bit about that? And the fact that she was willing to talk about this is in itself remarkable.ĬOOPER: It is, although getting her to talk about it was like pulling teeth. For example, she was married very young and was physically battered. And yet, you write in some ways her story at the beginning was all too familiar. MARTIN: That's interesting, though, that that was repeated to her throughout her childhood. (Foreign language spoken) is what we say in Liberia when we want to say you're pretty cool (foreign language spoken). The literal translation is ma is her mother, who he's talking to. HELENE COOPER: What he said was (foreign language spoken). And I started by asking her to tell me what the prophet really said. Helene Cooper's new book is called "Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey Of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf." Helene Cooper joined us earlier this week in our Washington, D.C., studios. In her rise to the presidency of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has seen, experienced and accomplished things that most of us can only imagine. The same could be said of Sirleaf, as it's told in a new biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Helene Cooper. What he really said was in Liberian English, a patois that sounds utterly familiar to an American ear in one minute, incomprehensible in the next. As the story has been told over the years when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born, a street prophet told her family this child will be great.
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