[3]  Though Cooper grew up in California, she also frequently spent time with her aunt in Marshall, Texas as a child, which was her father’s hometown.

[4] Her mother, Maxine Rosemary (or “Mimi”), recalled her youngest child to be the most imaginative, always making up stories and playing with paper dolls.

[3][5] After receiving some praise and success with her first series of short stories, she soon followed with a second volume, Homemade Love, in 1986, which later won her an American Book Award in 1989 and much popularity and attention.

[6][5]  Cooper’s Homemade Love also made a TV debut as one of the short stories, “Funny Valentines,” was turned into a movie adaption in 1999 starring Alfre Woodard and Loretta Devine.

Five novels followed, including In Search of Satisfaction (1994), The Wake of the Wind (1998), The Future Has a Past (2000), Some People, Some Other Place (2004), and Life is Short But Wide (2009).

[2][8] In many of her published works, Cooper stays true to the theme of writing out the lives of different poor to middle-class African-American women who must overcome individual hardships to pursue happiness.

Many of her protagonists are in search of love and/or respect from their partners, and while doing so face other obstacles such as abuse, rape, resentment, childhood trauma, racism, and white supremacy.

It is also noted that Cooper found the most contentment writing her stories when it was raining, or when listening to classical orchestral works such as Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.

This short-story collection consists of twelve stories that mainly focus on the lives of women and the misogynistic hardships each individual faces, touching on subjects such as patriarchal resentment, alcoholism, and rape.