J. California Cooper | African American writer

J. California Cooper, a writer who enjoyed a widespread acclaim for her fable-like tales built largely around the imagined lives of African American women, died Sept. 20 in Seattle. She was 82.

A spokeswoman, Vivian Phillips, confirmed the death. Cooper had several heart attacks in recent years.

Cooper began her writing life as a playwright and held a series of jobs, from secretary to truck driver, before publishing her first book of fiction, The Family, in her 50s. She went on to write five novels and seven collections of short stories that won her a substantial following throughout the country.

Often secretive about her personal life and her writing methods, Cooper let her books speak for her instead. She often addressed the struggles of African American women in her fiction, writing stories in vernacular dialect as if she were speaking over the back fence about the weaknesses, sorrows and triumphs of ordinary people.

"In their own gossipy, circuitous, roundabout way, the stories enchant you because they are not stories; they are the truth reconstructed," novelist Terry McMillan wrote in the New York Times Book Review in 1987. "They give you the feeling that you're sitting on the front porch with the narrator, somewhere in the South; it's hot and humid, she's snapping beans, you're holding the bowl and she's giving you the inside scoop on everybody."

In the introduction to Cooper's first collection of stories, "A Piece of Mine" (1984), Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, said her work was in the tradition of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

"Some people think I've lived these stories," Cooper said. "If I did I'd be dead and ugly."

- The Washington Post