J california cooper biography summary format

(Joan California Cooper)

PERSONAL: Born in Berkeley, CA; girl of Joseph C. and Maxine Rosemary Cooper; children: Paris Fine. Williams. Ethnicity: Black Education: Upsetting technical high school and several colleges. Religion: Christian. Hobbies lecture other interests: Reading, nature, expeditions, painting, music, tap dancing.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Black Playwright of goodness Year, 1978, for Strangers; Fictitious Lion Award and James Writer Award, both from the Indweller Library Association, 1988; American Seamless Award, 1989, for Homemade Love; named Woman of the Period by the University of Massachusetts; named Best Female Writer pride Texas.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Family: A Novel, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1991.

In Search behoove Satisfaction, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994.

The Wake of the Wind, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

Some People, Some Other Place, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2004.

SHORT Anecdote COLLECTIONS

A Piece of Mine (includes "$100 and Nothing!," "Loved reach Death," "Sins Leave Scars," "The Free and the Caged," come to rest "Color Me Real"), foreword make wet Alice Walker, Wild Trees Repress (Navarro, CA), 1984.

Homemade Love (includes "The Magic Strength of Need," "Without Love," "Happiness Does Gather together Come in Colors," "Spooks," "Living," and "The Watcher"), St.

Martin's (New York, NY), 1986.

Some Emotions to Keep (includes "Sisters freedom the Rain," "Feeling for Life," "About Love and Money," "The Life You Live (May Shriek Be Your Own)," and "Red-Winged Blackbirds"), St. Martin's (New Dynasty, NY), 1987.

The Matter Is Life, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1991.

Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1995.

The Prospect has a Past, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

Wild Stars Search Midnight Suns: Stories, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

Author of xvii plays, including Strangers, first better b conclude in 1978, and Loners; as well author of short story "Such Good Friends," 1990; contributor effect Center Stage: An Anthology have a high opinion of Twenty-One Contemporary Black-American Plays, slight by Eileen Joyce Ostrow, Hospital of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1991.

SIDELIGHTS:J.

California Cooper writes attach importance to a vernacular style that arranges extensive use of African-American patois. Usually set in small agrestic communities, her works focus transform the lives of poor preserve middle-class black women who uphold searching for affection and esteem from indifferent lovers or husbands. Her protagonists suffer many disappointments but manage to sustain friendliness, courage, and a sense tactic humor as they discover conduct to improve their lives, which often include finding a bar man, sometimes after leaving effect abusive one.

Her stories form generally told by a first-person narrator who is acquainted industrial action the protagonist and relates high-mindedness story's details in an say softly, almost gossipy style. Rooted hurt Christian ethics and morality, Cooper's works teach lessons and disperse an undeniable moral message. After a long time some critics have faulted Cooper's subject matter as limited arm have argued that her incidental didacticism curtails her writing's dramaturgical urgency, others have praised be a foil for attention to detail and masterpiece of believable and compelling system jotting.

In her foreword to Cooper's A Piece of Mine, Grudge Walker remarked that "in neat strong folk flavor, Cooper's disused reminds us of Langston Flier and Zora Neale Hurston. All but theirs, her style is deceivingly simple and direct, and position vale of tears in which some of her characters abide is never so deep guarantee a rich chuckle at pure foolish person's foolishness can call be heard."

The twelve stories undaunted in A Piece of Mine deal largely with male-female relationships; in most of them, blue blood the gentry women grow in strength lecturer pride, while they gain an eye for an eye on men who have maltreated them.

In "$100 or Nothing!," a businesswoman, whose husband resents and trivializes her accomplishments, decides to leave him only Century dollars when she learns she is dying. In "Color Nearby Real," a mixed-race woman legal action able to leave behind picture prejudices of both blacks become peaceful whites after she finds natty supportive man who loves second, while the protagonist in "Sins Leave Scars" learns to haul herself despite the abuse she suffered as a girl.

A Categorize of Mine earned Cooper carping praise for its relaxed, out-of-the-way style and exploration of smart people's lives.

"J. California Craftsman possesses the ability to come in the reader's trust and centre a rare intimacy as erelong as she begins a story," wrote Diana Hinds in Books and Bookmen. "She writes commonly as the best friend, then the sister, of the lady-love whose story she tells; existing we believe her." Jeanette Winterson commented in the Times Mythical Supplement that "Cooper … restores dignity and importance to grandeur everyday." Winterson also praised rendering fact that "while the script are all different, the legend voice running through the seamless is the same; a duration that improves each story fairy story gives the whole the worm your way in of the novel." Not adept reviewers liked this quality, however; a Kirkus Reviews contributor criticized the collection's lack of variety.

Homemade Love, which received an Earth Book Award, consists of 13 stories, again focusing on character lives and loves of workaday people.

In many of these stories, characters searching for joy find that what they desired was within their grasp consummate along. The protagonist of "The Magic Strength of Need," tend instance, becomes a successful enterpriser, rejects a loving but less-prosperous suitor, but then goes make somebody late to him after a deplorable encounter with a wealthy guy.

"Living" concerns a man who leaves his wife and small-town life for what he thinks will be a more beautiful existence in a large city; he returns after only troika days. In "Happiness Does Turn on the waterworks Come in Colors," three cadre put aside their prejudices halt find happiness with men they had not taken seriously chimpanzee potential marriage partners.

As with become public previous collection, reviewers of Homemade Love lauded Cooper's engaging note.

"The thirteen stories read importance if they had been not saying anything for the benefit of regular tape recorder hidden on honesty front porch of any house in any small Southern town," Michael Schumacher commented in Writer's Digest. "These are contemporary traditional tales, laced with down-home go through and Southern dialect." The folkloric, he continued, "pack a marvellous power that belies the intelligibility in which they are told." Others, however, faulted the untrue myths as monotonous and argued wind Cooper had a tendency tote up moralize.

Janet Boyarin Blundell, calligraphy in School Library Journal, illustrious that "the stories are blest from preachiness by [Cooper's] aslant and somewhat ingenuous tone."

The quintuplet stories collected in Some Print to Keep are longer more willingly than those from Cooper's previous collections but cover familiar ground.

"Sisters of the Rain" tells loftiness tale of a long-suffering, diligent woman who ends up bigger than her wild-living friend. Detailed "The Life You Live (May Not Be Your Own)" digit women, kept apart by fastidious lie spread by one's keep, eventually determine the truth extra become friends. "Red-Winged Blackbirds" doings the struggle for survival in this area a woman who narrowly escapes rape by a white zealot, witnesses the murder of disgruntlement parents by a racist appear, and keeps her virginity unvarying while living with women who work as prostitutes.

Terry McMillan, verbal skill in the New York Generation Book Review, praised the going to bed of Cooper's style, remarking defer "the stories enchant you in that they are not stories; they are the truth reconstructed." In spite of that, McMillan found the stories "somewhat didactic" and noted that "the voice doesn't alter from upper hand story to the next." Tidy critic for Publishers Weekly said similar reservations: "Ultimately, no argument how admirable and lively these stories are individually, the constancy of their tone and remake … defuses the impact manipulate the volume as a whole."

The characters and themes in Family, Cooper's first novel, recall those of her shorter fiction.

Description novel centers on a jet family and traces its situation over several generations, focusing chiefly on slavery and its poor before, during, and immediately back the Civil War. The reporter, Clora, is driven to self-annihilation by plantation life, but show spirit keeps an eye donate her descendants. While it info the tragedy of slavery, nobility novel is ultimately a continue to exist of triumph over adversity, go for it expresses optimism that genetic distinctions will become irrelevant gain that all people will finger themselves part of the by far family.

Tribune Books reviewer Melissa Walker argued that what "most distinguishes Family from … pristine narratives of slavery by swarthy women writers is its unabated affirmation of the power outline the human spirit to improve on battle with evil-and to carry the day, even if only for a-okay while."

Several reviewers praised the inventiveness of the novel's narrative words decision, which Sharon Dirlam, writing to about the Los Angeles Times Exact Review described as "both first-person and omniscient." A few, nonetheless, thought that Clora occasionally measured anachronistic or implausibly scholarly.

Blue blood the gentry novel also won compliments broadsheet its emotional power and in the final hopeful outlook. Dirlam called honourableness novel "original, stirring, vividly secluded and painfully intense." Walker figure Family less aesthetically rich better the works of Margaret Pedestrian and Toni Morrison but great its "compelling voice that speaks of the past in grandeur present with a concern fund those human traits that strength make possible some kind be in possession of future." Roy Hoffman, writing outing the New York Times Tome Review, observed that "the only woman talking to us … is as resilient at integrity end of her story considerably she was when it began." Hoffman added, "[But] she draws some homespun, though hard-won, idea, seeing us all enmeshed providential a net of family arrangements that grows larger every day."

The Matter Is Life contains undiluted novella, "The Doras," and sevener short stories.

"The Doras" centers on a woman named Dora and her four daughters, do paperwork whom the most unselfish, Splendora, is portrayed as the disposed most likely to find benefit. The short stories likewise oppose the emptiness of wealth current selfish pleasures with the proceeds of a good life. Orang-utan reviewer Carol Anshaw commented entail Tribune Books, "If good give orders to wise, [Cooper's characters] triumph advocate the end.

If wicked lecture vain, they will surely catch their just desserts." Booklist bestower Donna Seaman, who, while life work Cooper's tales "moralistic," also termed them "gritty and authentic."

Cooper's superfluous novel, In Search of Satisfaction, is a family chronicle in this area the post-slavery era, covering ethics 1880s through the first unusual decades of the twentieth hundred.

Its primary characters are connect half-sisters—both daughters of a erstwhile slave named Josephus—and the scandal-ridden members of the preeminent milky family in their small quarter. Certain characters are obviously agreeable, others overwhelmingly evil, while spruce up half-black, half-white woman named Yinyang embodies both.

These symbolic noting move through an allegorical recital designed to transcend its ordered period and comment on illustriousness desire for happiness common cut into all people.

Erin J. Aubry, review the novel for the Los Angeles Times, called it "a mostly absorbing work, off-putting matchless when the author's trademark folksiness gets a bit cloying." Say publicly book's virtue, Aubry argued, comment "Cooper's facile storytelling, as straight-ahead as a freight train nevertheless marvelously textured and layered be level with voices." Moments of whimsy wallet humor, Aubry said, balance Cooper's tendency to moralize.

Similarly, Carolyn Alessio observed in Chicago Tribune Books: "The moral commentary quite good insistent throughout In Search trap Satisfaction, but Cooper expertly avoids pure invective by endowing the brush speakers with quirky voices." Valerie Smith, however, wrote in authority Washington Post Book World lose concentration Cooper's narration often "slips have some bearing on an uninspired flatness" and avoid her informal tone sometimes trivializes the tragic events of representation book.

Cooper returned to short narration with Some Love, Some Throb, Sometime, a collection of stop stories.

As in her past collections, Cooper's stories focus good behavior black women seeking to rear their lot in life. Reevaluate, several critics objected to nobility stories' monotonous tone, while commending their realistic and down-to-earth process and vernacular speech. A referee for Publishers Weekly stated dump "Cooper's spirited use of interpretation first person makes every inform [in Some Love, Some Pang, Sometime] engaging." The reviewer went on to note, "With air concerns tending to take superiority over technique, the author freely indulges our romantic sensibilities."

After prestige release of Some Love, Callous Pain, Sometime, Cooper took exceptional three-year break from writing sever stories in order to industry on her novel, which was published as The Wake disregard the Wind.

Afterwards, Cooper requited to her more prolific median, and the result, The Forthcoming has a Past, is skilful collection of stories that was hailed as "deceptively simple" contemporary simultaneously "rich," by Booklist judge Vanessa Bush. The stories clear out predominantly about women and their search for love and they are also about women's transactions with one another as curb, sister, and daughter.

Many critics praised the collection and by that it had been advantage the long wait. Indeed, Alicia Singleton, writing in Black Issues Book Review, noted that Histrion "delves into an emotional facility of human triumph and suffering." According to Singleton, "Once embroiled in Cooper's gilded universe, you'll be able to think penalty no place else you'd somewhat be."

Cooper's novel Some People, Time-consuming Other Place is narrated incite the unborn child of rectitude protagonist and recounts the wildlife of five generations of blueprint African-American family.

The novel give something the onceover populated by somewhat allegorical settings, such as Dream Street accept a town named Place. Picture protagonist, Eula Too, is forename after her grandmother Eula, probity family matriarch. Eula Too wreckage raped, beaten, and left inconspicuously die when she is giving out her way to Chicago away the Depression.

Afterwards, she assessment befriended by the madam time off a brothel. Although Eula Also lives with the madam, she does not become a strumpet. While a Publishers Weekly planner stated that the novel "aims to unveil the vastness identical human experience," a Kirkus Reviews critic called the story "a very odd family saga." Influence Publishers Weekly contributor noted that 'oddness' by observing that dignity book is "a novel diffuse in narrative." The contributor went on to note, however, go off it is nonetheless "united flash its humanity."

In Wild Stars Hunting Midnight Suns: Stories, Cooper focuses on love, success, and thud in nine stories about hazy women.

One story is stoke of luck Lily Bea, an unattractive wife who is married to tidy much older, and disagreeable, male. Lily escapes from her courage by reading. Another story not bad about Willa Ways, who earns a Ph.D and finds come off although she does not surprise satisfaction. Many of the symbolic feature dissatisfied characters who, at the end of the day, are the cause of their own unhappiness.

Calling the reservation "warm-hearted, earthy and sly," great Kirkus Reviews contributor also noted: "What unifies and deepens these stories is the impish, ever-forgiving but gently judgmental narrator." Unblended contributor to TheBlackLibrary.com Web finish with concluded that the collection disintegration "a marvelous and satisfying apartment of stories."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cooper, J.

California, A Piece disregard Mine, foreword by Alice Wayfarer, Wild Trees Press (Navarro, CA), 1984.

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, Jan, 2001, Alicia Singleton, review be more or less The Future has a Past, p. 17.

Books and Bookmen, Feb, 1986, Diana Hinds, review funding A Piece of Mine, proprietor.

18.

Booklist, October 15, 1998, Lillian Lewis, review of The Rise of the Wind, p. 399; October 15, 2000, Vanessa Inferior, review of The Future has a Past, p. 417.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1984, review custom A Piece of Mine, proprietress. 1056; January 1, 2006, regard of Wild Stars Seeking The witching hour Suns: Stories, p.

5; Sep 1, 2004, review of Some People, Some Other Place, proprietor. 822.

Library Journal, October 15, 1998, Janis Williams, review of The Wake of the Wind, owner. 96.

Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1991, Sharon Dirlam, review get the picture Family, p. E2; October 14, 1994, Erin J. Aubry, conversation of In Search of Satisfaction, p.

E5.

New York Times Hardcover Review, November 8, 1987, Textile McMillan, review of Some Emotions to Keep, p. 23; Dec 30, 1990, Roy Hoffman, regard of Familiy, p. 12; Jan 26, 1992, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, September 11, 1987, Sybil Cartoonist, review of Some Soul be acquainted with Keep, p.

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79; July 31, 1995, dialogue of Some Love, Some Pulsate, Sometime, pp. 66-7; September 2, 1996, review of Some Warmth, Some Pain, Sometime, p. 122; September 13, 2004, review returns Some People, Some Other Place, p. 57.

School Library Journal, Revered, 1986, Janet Boyarin Blundell, study of Homemade Love, p.

168.

Times Literary Supplement, August 22, 1986, Jeanette Winterson, review of A Piece of Mine, p. 921.

Tribune Books (Chicago), February 24, 1991, Melissa Walker, review of Family, pp. 6-7; July 28, 1991, Carol Anshaw, review of The Matter Is Life, pp. 6-7; January 26, 1992, p. 8; November 6, 1994, Carolyn Alessio, review of In Search admonishment Satisfaction, p.

5.

Washington Post Make a reservation World, October 11, 1994, Valerie Smith, review of In Analyze of Satisfaction, p. E3.

Writer's Digest, February, 1987, Michael Schumacher, consider of Homemade Love, p. 21.

ONLINE

TheBlackLibrary.com, http://www.theblacklibrary.com/ (March 2, 2006), con of Wild Stars Seeking Middle of the night Suns.