New York Times reporter Helene Cooper recounts her return to her native Liberia after 23 years in this week’s Magazine cover story:

During my growing-up years in Liberia in the 1970s, I had made the descent to Robertsfield more than a dozen times, usually when returning home from summer vacations. I sat so close to the plane window that it clouded from my breath. I would look down for the landmarks that told me I was home: the rubber trees at Firestone, the squat, red-clay-tinged whitewash buildings of Schieffelin, the three-headed palm tree near our house at Sugar Beach. I would strain and squint to try to see the two mansions that made up the Cooper family compound at Sugar Beach.

Now, three decades later, I certainly couldn’t see what remained of our house. From the air, it was all bush and sea, like a set for some movie of Africa 100 years ago. My hands clenched into fists. For 23 years I hid in America, remaking myself into a nondescript black American woman. I polished up my American accent so that I sounded as if I were from New York. I dumped my Liberian passport, got a job as a journalist, covered the Florida presidential recount and the Sept. 11 attacks and even embedded with the Third Infantry Division to cover my country’s invasion of Iraq. And with each new accouterment of my ever-evolving image, I further shed Liberia.

Until now.

Clearly, my Liberia dispatches have created an insatiable demand for Liberian takes in the US…