The Haunted Crossroads: Liberian Wars and Trans-Atlantic Traffic in “Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten” by J. Nicole Brooks

Abstract

How to Write About Africa" (2005). 4 Liberian Wars were also perceived as particularly problematic to account for because of the complexity of interests and power relations, resulting from re-colonialization, but also because of the emotional loading they entailed and ambiguous positions and roles they involved. 5 Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten, written by J. Nicole Brooks -American actress, playwright and director -and first staged in 2007 in Chicago, addresses many of these problems, exposing the controversies of representation and reporting, commenting on ambiguities of positioning and simultaneously provoking by confrontational and affective images and scenes. The play approaches the problems of representation of Liberian and American relations and the realities of the second Liberian civil war (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003) from the perspective of a war reporter whose ambiguous relation to Liberia interferes with his journalist ethics and code of action.Trying to present the complicated situation and history of Liberia, the shifting political alliances and conflicts and, most importantly, the colonial legacy of slave trade as well as displacement and recreation of settlement of American-Liberians in Africa, Black Diamond also asks questions about ethics, positioning vis-à-vis trauma and war and authorization to speak on behalf of others, problematized in scenes of hauntings and hallucinations.Nicole Brooks' play develops around two main characters, one of which is modeled on the authentic figure of a woman soldier called Black Diamond, who lost her parents in war and was violently raped at the age of 13 by soldiers. In the second civil war she became a ruthless military leader herself in the armed forces of Women Artillery Commandos, whom she joined to avenge her parents and protect her daughter.The second main character, whose perspective is central to this study, is a fictional character -Chogan Jim Fox, a reporter for BBC Africa, who goes through an identity crisis when faced with the atrocities of the war. This process is aided by his decision not to take his pills (for epilepsy) as a result of which he experiences psychotic states, in which he sees ancestral ghosts. The two characters meet because of the exclusive interview Fox is commissioned to conduct with Black Diamond. Both become connected by the figure of Jusu Masali, the one who saved Black Diamond after the rape in the past and hosts the journalist during the interview project. Masali, an artist and shaman producing traditional Liberian ritual masques, becomes a foster father to both of them. Jim comes to temporarily replace Masali's son, who is away in Europe, studying at the London School of Economics and planning, as Masali says, "to save us all from our economic disaster." 6 The contact between Black Diamond and Jim Fox, difficult and problematic as it is, symbolically represents the dialogue between the local ethnic groups represented by the former and the newcomers/homecomers/invaders (Americo-Liberians) represented ...