Homemade Love - by J California Cooper (Paperback)

About the Book

"In her widely acclaimed short story collection, award-winning author J. California Cooper brings tales full of wonder at the mystery of life and the hardness of fate. Follow characters as they find love in the most unlikely of places and share their joy, sadness and wisdom with the warmth and humor of the folk tale tradition. Awed, bedeviled, bemused, all of Cooper's characters are borne up by the sheer power of life itself."--

Book Synopsis

In this American Book Award winning short story collection, J. California Cooper brings to life thirteen moving short stories that explore the threads and nuances of all kinds of love--whether romantic, familial or friendship. Written in the literary folk tradition associated most often with Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, Homemade Love draws a vivid picture of Black characters finding love in the most unlikely of places.

Review Quotes

"Cooper's work reminds us of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston." --Alice Walker

"[Cooper] tells stories that move and dance about people who pop off the page to lodge themselves firmly in the reader's affection." - Publishers Weekly

"Cooper knows how to 'talk' her stories to us, as though each of them is told by a kindly and concerned friend. The sound of them is lovely, memorable, haunting." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Gutsy and familiar...Cooper's power comes from sticking to her instinct, which is to tell a story, plain and simple." --The Washington Post

"Ms. cooper is as down-home as Zora Neale Hurston, thank you, and blooming into as skilled a storyteller. Cooper's characters are the folk heroes of black culture...Tales of triumph that give you reason to keep reading." --Essence

"These stories are jazzy, clubby, folksy, small towny, populist, perky, and if you don't like them, you must be in an absolutely unshakeable bad mood..." --Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times

"Both men and women are treated with such bemused love that these tales of passions gone astray are transformed into celebrations of life." --MS.

About the Author

J. California Cooper is the author of novels, six collections of stories, and seventeen plays. Her book Homemade Love was the winner of the American Book Award in 1989, and she has been honored as the Black Playwright of the Year. She has also received the James Baldwin Writing Award and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association. She lived in California until her death in 2014.