In Search of Satisfaction

The folk flavor of her storytelling has earned her??constant comparison to Langston Hughes and Zora??Neale Hurston, but through four collections of??short stories and two novels, J. California Cooper??has proven that hers is a wholly original talent??--one that embraces readers in an ever-widening??circle from one book to the next. With In??Search Of Satisfaction, Cooper??gracefully portrays men and women, some good and others??wickedly twisted, caught in their individual??thickets of want and need. On a once-grand plantation??in Yoville, "a legal town-ship founded by the??very rich for their own personal use," a??freed slave named Josephus fathers two daughters,??Ruth and Yinyang, by two different women. His??desire, to give Yinyang and himself money and??opportunities, oozes through the family like an elixir,??melding with the equally strong yearnings of??Yoville's other residents, whose tastes don't??complement their neighbors'. What Josephus buries in his??life affects generations to come. J. California??Cooper's unfettered view of sin, forgiveness, and??redemption gives In Search Of??Satisfaction a singular richness that belies its??universal themes.

J. California Cooper is the author of four novels and six collections of stories. She was honored as Black Playwright of the Year, and her work received the American Book Award, the James Baldwin Writing Award, and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association. She died in 2014.