Jane, his surrogate mother, has Aunt Peggy con-
vert Mose into a hummingbird and later a mock-
ingbird. On both occasions, Mose is able to fly to
his mother, whom he finds grieving as well on a
distant plantation. Mose sings to Becky, who, rec-
ognizing his voice, is soothed and comforted by
his plaintive song. Mother and child are reunited
in the end as a result of the joint effort of the ex-
tended family structure created and maintained
in the slave quarters. Most important is Aunt Peg-
gy’s role as conjurer. Her empowerment is derived
from her familiarity and relationship with nature,
which she is able to harness and directly influ-
ence. Even the slave master, Marse Dugal, retains
her service.
Through his treatment and characterization of
Uncle Julius and Aunt Peggy, Chesnutt unmasks
and validates a complex social structure within
the slave community. Both affirm that slaves had a
rich and animated life of their own in which they
found creative ways of exercising control over
their daily lives by exorcizing the master’s gaze.
Theirs was a self-sufficient world that turned in-
ward to reproduce and continue its own culture,
one that was firmly grounded in orality and an-
tiphonality, the sound of blackness. According to
HOUSTON BAKER, Uncle Julius “presents a world in
which ‘dialect’ masks the drama of African Amer-
ican spirituality challenging and changing disas-
trous transformation of slavery” (44). In 1928, the
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
COLORED PEOPLE awarded Chesnutt its Spingarn
Medal for his pioneering work as a literary artist
depicting the life and struggles of Americans of
Negro descent, and for his long and useful career
as scholar, worker, and freeman in one of Ameri-
ca’s greatest cities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Re-
naissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.
Bone, Robert. Down Home: A History of Afro-Ameri-
can Short Fiction from Its Beginnings to the End of
the Harlem Renaissance. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1975.
Gates, Henry L., Jr. The Signifying Monkey: Towards a
Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Wilfred D. SamuelsCooper, J. California (1940– )
Prolific short story writer, novelist, and playwright,
J. California Cooper was born in Berkeley, Califor-
nia, in 1940. Cooper says that she has always “just
liked stories” and that she remembers writing plays
she performed for friends and family when she
was only five years old. She started her writing ca-
reer as a playwright in the 1970s, eventually writ-
ing 17 plays, some of which were performed by the
Berkeley Black Repertory Theater. She was hon-
ored as the Black Playwright of the Year in 1978
for her play, Strangers. In the 1980s, Cooper’s short
stories caught the attention of fellow writer ALICE
WALKER, who was impressed by Cooper’s “strong
folk flavor.” Cooper’s short story collection A Piece
of Mine (1984) became the first work published by
Walker’s Wild Tree Press. In all, Cooper has pub-
lished six collections of short stories, A Piece of
Mine (1984); Homemade Love (1986), which won
her the American Book Award; Some Soul to Keep
(1987); The Matter Is Life (1991); Some Love, Some
Pain, Sometime: Stories (1996); and The Future
Has a Past: Stories (2001), along with three novels,
Family: A Novel (1991), In Search of Satisfaction
(1994), and Wake of the Wind (1998). Her work
has also won the James Baldwin Award (1988) and
the Literary Lion Award of the American Library
Association (1988).
Compared to such African-American authors
as LANGSTON HUGHES and ZORA NEALE HURSTON,
Cooper focuses most of her stories on the everyday
foibles of common people. The settings are usu-
ally rural, and the time periods vary from colonial
America to contemporary times, highlighting the
African-American experience. Each work tack-
les the human condition and the ways in which
people have tried to understand the complexities
of life. Cooper seems most concerned with shar-
ing stories that illuminate the moral dilemmasCooper, J. California 117