J. California Cooper

J. California Cooper

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"Her style is deceptively simple and direct and the vale of tears in which her characters reside is never so deep that a rich chuckle at a foolish person's foolishness cannot be heard." —Alice Walker

Photo Courtesy of National Book Club Conference founder Curtis Bunn

J. California Cooper first found acclaim as a playwright. The author of seventeen plays, she was named Black Playwright of the Year in 1978. It was through her work in the theater that she caught the attention of acclaimed poet and novelist Alice Walker. Encouraged by Walker to turn her popular storytelling skills to fiction, Cooper wrote her first collection of short stories, A Piece of Mine, in 1984. Called "rich in wisdom and insight" and "a book that's worth reading," A Piece of Mine introduced Cooper's trademark style: her intimate and energetic narration, sympathetic yet sometimes troubled characters, and the profound moral messages that underlie seemingly simple stories. Two more story collections followed on the heels of A Piece of Mine. In 1986 came Homemade Love, winner of an American Book Award, and, in 1987, Some Soul to Keep.

Listen to an Interview of J. California Cooper
Interviewed by Lee E. Meadows on Detroit's WPON's "Book Beat" Radio Program 1/18/99

Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns: Stories
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ISBN: 0385511337
Format: Hardcover, 224pp
Pub. Date: April 4, 2006
Publisher: Doubleday Publishing

In stories that are simple yet elegant, hard-hitting yet poignant, J. California Cooper writes about the search for fulfillment that propels people’s dreams and desires. In “As Time Goes By” a young woman named Futila Ways grows up focusing her dream of a better future on material wealth, only to discover that having everything she ever wanted cannot compensate for the emptiness in her heart. “The Eye of the Beholder” recounts the story of an unattractive young girl, Lily Bea, whose search for love leads her to embrace her own brand of freedom. And in “Catch a Falling Heart” a woman mildly crippled in a fall endures loneliness and solitude until she finds a man and provides a resting place for his love. Each story beautifully conveys the profound human need to seek some sort of satisfaction, just as a wild star seeks a midnight sun.

J. California Cooper’s insights into the hearts and souls of ordinary people and her irresistible storytelling voice have endeared her to fans and critics. As Ms. magazine wrote, “Cooper’s stories beckon. It is as if she is patting the seat next to us, enticing us to come sit and listen.”

Some People, Some Other Place
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ISBN: 0385496826
Format: Hardcover, 384pp
Pub. Date: October 19, 2004
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated

J. California Cooper returns with a sweeping novel about love and heartbreak, perseverance and luck, telling her tale with an insight and grace that reaffirms Alice Walker's words of praise for her previous works: "Her style is deceptively simple and direct and the vale of tears in which her characters reside is never so deep that a rich chuckle at a person's foolishness cannot be heard."

In her acclaimed novels and short stories, J. California Cooper has created moving portraits of people striving to make their way in a hard, often unjust world. Whether it explores the blatant racial and class biases of nineteenth-century America or the more subtle forms of discrimination that exist today, "It is the universality of her themes that has made Ms. Cooper's work popular," as the Dallas Morning News has written.

Some People, Some Other Place is Cooper's biggest, most far-reaching novel to date. A multigenerational tale, it is set in a town called "Place," on a street named "Dream Street." In the words of the novel's narrator, "the block surely had about it a feeling of long accumulation of history, of life, of many lives intertwined." As she chronicles the interlocking lives of the residents of Dream Street, Cooper places the stories of the individuals and their families within the wider context of America's social and economic history. We meet the narrator's great grandparents, who left the poverty of the Deep South in 1895 and made their way to a farm in Oklahoma; her grandparents, who continued the northward journey with their eyes on the promised jobs of the industrial Midwest but were forced to settle without reaching their goal; and her mother, who finishes the journey and discovers that life at 903 Dream Street carries new burdens as well as rewards. The neighbors on the block are people of all colors, all striving to overcome personal troubles and disappointments, and all holding fast to their dreams of a better life.

The Future Has a Past
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Format: Hardcover, 288pp.
ISBN: 038549680X
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: November 2000

Read an AALBC.com book review by Thumper

Read an Excerpt

"Maisha, the narrator of "A Shooting Star," chronicles the much-gossiped-about affairs of her friend Lorene and laments her inability to differentiate between sex and love. In "The Eagle Flies," Vinnie, a single mother, devotes herself to her selfish children, letting opportunities for her own happiness slip by until it is almost too late. In "A Filet of Soul," Louella, raised to believe she is ugly and undesirable, falls for a fast-talking con man and loses her small inheritance and her dignity; but his betrayal turns out to mark the beginning of a love affair - and a life - Louella had never imagined she would find. In the final story of this collection, "The Lost and the Found," Lorene waits and waits for the philanderer she loves to marry her, almost letting the love of a good man pass her by."

The Wake of the Wind
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Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1998
Format: Trade Cloth

Selected as an AALBC.com Book Club Selection January 2003 - Read the Chat Transcript

From the beloved and highly successful author of "Family" and "In Search of Satisfaction" comes a dramatic and thought-provoking new novel of one African-American family's triumph in the face of the hardships and challenges of the post-Civil War South.

Some Love, Some.. Some Love, Some Pain, Some Time: Stories
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Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1996
Format: Trade Paper

The author of In Search of Satisfaction employs her characteristic themes of romance, heartbreak, struggle and faith in Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime. Her characters offer inspiration, laughter, instruction and pure enjoyment.

Homemade Love
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Publisher: Saint Martin's Press, Incorporated
Date Published: April 1988
Format: Trade Paper

Awed, bedevilled, and bemused, all Cooper's characters are borne up by the sheer power of life itself in these wise and exhilarating stories from Cooper's newest book.

In Search of Satisfaction
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Arthur Rothstein (Photographer), Designed by F. J. Levine

Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1995
Format: Trade Paper

Cooper's second novel is an epic saga of three families whose paths intertwine with the devil in their quests for wealth, power and love. The history of the town is inextricably linked to Josephus, a freed slave, and his two dauthers, Ruth and Yinyang. In seeking the legacy left by their father, the sisters pull each other into the vortex of ever-powerful emotion.

Family Family
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Designed by Gina Davis

Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: December 1991
Format: Trade Paper

Much has been written about the institution of slavery. But with Family, Cooper has taken the slave narrative and recreated it as an epic, yet collo quial, poem. "Mesmerizing . . . Cooper weaves four wry, humorous, tragic tales that envelop and transcend time, offering hope and renewal at the same time they chronicle desolation and death."--San Francisco Chronicle. (Anchor)January

The Matter Is Life
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Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1992
Format: Trade Paper

American Book Award-winner J. California Cooper spins insight and irony into modern-day parables about simple people who love too little and too late, and about those who toil and struggle against a difficult and often hostile environment. This fourth collection of Cooper's unforgettable stories is alternately charming, disturbing, poignant, and humorous.

Some Soul to Keep
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Publisher: Saint Martin's Press, Incorporated
Date Published: October 1988
Format: Trade Paper

J. California Cooper writes with a transparent clarity and such exuberant energy that her characters leap off the page, bursting with stories they've got to tell--stories of simple people, stories of families and fate, of love and marriage, of death and the triumph of the human spirit.

A Piece of Mine
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Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: December 1991
Format: Trade Paper

In 1984, an extraordinary first collection of short stories written by award-winning playwright J. California Cooper was published to much acclaim. Now back in print, A Piece of Mine remains one of her most loved books. "Cooper's characters are the folk heroes of Black culture . . ."--Essence.

Book Cover
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The Matter Is Life
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Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: June 1991
Format: Trade Cloth

Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife
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Carleen Brice Editor & J. California Cooper Contributor

ISBN: 0807028231
Number Of Pages: 252
Publication Date: May 15, 2003
Publisher: Beacon Press

"Age Ain't Nothing but a Number is my roadmap."—Iyanla Vanzant

Forty-five black women writers—known and new—discuss midlife in the first anthology of its kind.

Finally, a collection that celebrates, considers, contemplates, even criticizes "midlife" from a black woman's point of view. Age Ain't Nothing but a Number ranges over every aspect of black women's lives: personal growth, family and friendship, love and sexuality, health, beauty, illness, spirituality, creativity, financial independence, work, and scores of other topics.

Midlife today isn't your grandmother's "change of life." Today, black women call hot flashes "power surges," and menopause, the "pause that refreshes." These days, middle-aged women may be newlyweds or new mothers, as well as grandmothers or widows. They may experience the empty-nest syndrome and then the "return-to-the-nest syndrome" as adult children move back home. They may navigate the field of Internet dating, travel the world, teach homeless women, take up pottery, or study international business.

This anthology captures all of these aspects of midlife as experienced by some of the finest voices in African-American writing today. Featuring
the work of Maya Angelou, J. California Cooper, Pearl Cleage, Nikki Giovanni, Susan L. Taylor, Alice Walker, and dozens of others, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number will make readers think, laugh, and cry and will be the perfect gift
book for spring.

Bookwire Tour and Media Events featuring J. California Cooper
http://www.bookwire.com/Highway.Author$1224

Bantam Doubleday Dell Online
http://www.bdd.com/read/jcalifornia_bgc.html

Voices from the Gaps
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/JCaliforniaCooper.html

bio excerpted from bio. at Bantam Doubleday Dell Online