A Piece of Mine
A Piece of Mind
What is that Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Belles Lettres have in common with J. California Cooper? They’re women? Or they’re famous authors who have written some of the best literature that the world has seen? Maybe, however the one thing that stands out about J. California Copper from the rest is one word, storytelling. It’s one thing to write a short story were as the reader can pretty much pin point who’s who, what the issue is, and what steps they take to solve the problem. However it takes a real artist, true to the craft, to create a masterpiece that is so daring and defying that calling it a short story would be in insult to the author and the work. Stories that have a combination of rhythm and emotion can only hold the title being called a parable. And with parables comes life learned lessons that are disturbed by tough love or falling down a few times to understand the saying You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
All these things are what J. California Copper displays in her 1984 book entitled A Piece of Mine. A Piece of Mine is a collection of stories that describe the wages of sin and the rewards of patience, the occasional sweet taste of revenge in a moral universe in which justice operates independently of social and economic forces. The story beings in a little town where everybody knows everybody. So when you read you can relate to the sin of the eye can cause you pain with Mary and Mr. Charlie in $100 and Nothing. Or the bittersweet term of lovehate that Lida Mae had to come to terms with in Sins leave Scars. Or the true meaning of friend to the end in A Jewel for a Friend. All the stories have some kind of lesson that you can take from it. The style is deceptively simple and direct. The characters are never so deep that even a rich chuckle at foolish person foolishness cannot be heard.
The dialogue that each of the character’s brought in each of the stories was one of the reasons that I enjoyed the book.
What is that Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Belles Lettres have in common with J. California Cooper? They’re women? Or they’re famous authors who have written some of the best literature that the world has seen? Maybe, however the one thing that stands out about J. California Copper from the rest is one word, storytelling. It’s one thing to write a short story were as the reader can pretty much pin point who’s who, what the issue is, and what steps they take to solve the problem. However it takes a real artist, true to the craft, to create a masterpiece that is so daring and defying that calling it a short story would be in insult to the author and the work. Stories that have a combination of rhythm and emotion can only hold the title being called a parable. And with parables comes life learned lessons that are disturbed by tough love or falling down a few times to understand the saying You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
All these things are what J. California Copper displays in her 1984 book entitled A Piece of Mine. A Piece of Mine is a collection of stories that describe the wages of sin and the rewards of patience, the occasional sweet taste of revenge in a moral universe in which justice operates independently of social and economic forces. The story beings in a little town where everybody knows everybody. So when you read you can relate to the sin of the eye can cause you pain with Mary and Mr. Charlie in $100 and Nothing. Or the bittersweet term of lovehate that Lida Mae had to come to terms with in Sins leave Scars. Or the true meaning of friend to the end in A Jewel for a Friend. All the stories have some kind of lesson that you can take from it. The style is deceptively simple and direct. The characters are never so deep that even a rich chuckle at foolish person foolishness cannot be heard.
The dialogue that each of the character’s brought in each of the stories was one of the reasons that I enjoyed the book.