Tajh Rust

Mar 3, 2023 | nytimes.com | Adam Bradley |Dominic Chambers |Tajh Rust

I FIRST HEARD the name J. California Cooper last November. Cooper, who died in 2014 at 82, was the author of five novels, seven short-story collections and 17 plays. Her books are folksy, funny and wise. They center on Black characters, most of them women. As Alice Walker, 79, who published Cooper’s debut collection of fiction, “A Piece of Mine” (1984), wrote, Cooper “reminds us of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.”Why had I never heard her name?