The Future Has a Past: Stories Paperback – October 16, 2001

African-American women struggling to make something of their smalltown lives inspire novelist and short story writer Cooper's (Homemade Love; A Piece of Mine) sixth collection of four down-home tales, told with wisdom and gentle humor. Navigating poverty, unwanted pregnancy, single motherhood and inexperience, all Cooper's heroines triumph, to lesser and greater degrees, finding "real love" despite being surrounded by "no good men." "Filet of Soul," a novella-length story, features Sedalia, a poor girl who can't afford to go to her high school prom. Enchanted when her crush leaves the party to dance with her on the school lawn, she responds to his overtures. The result is Sedalia's first and last sexual encounter, which leaves her pregnant and twice as poor as before. To protect her daughter from making the same mistake, Sedalia raises Luella to think she's unlovable and ugly. Not surprisingly, her efforts backfire. In "The Eagle Flies," single mother Vinnie works herself to the bone to care for her two ungrateful children, then enjoys the courtship of a man who encourages her to look out for herself; in "A Shooting Star," sensible Maisha meditates on the fate of her promiscuous friend, Lorene. Old-fashioned simplicity, common sense and colorful language make the potentially preachy aspects of these stories quaintly charming. Cooper occasionally forgets her vernacular and slips into more scholarly speech: one minute the narrators are saying "Humph, honey!" and calling each other "Sister-woman" and in the next they reference Dali and take "umbrage." Still, long comfortably established in the affections of her readersDand critically well regarded, tooDCooper continues to serve up stories as satisfying and heartwarming as homemade apple pie, and which should prove, with careful handling, just as popular. Author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Let us think of the future as a house we are building. A brick and a plank a day," Cooper writes in the introduction. Her stories recount the lives of women, young, middle age, and old. Maisha watches with envy and condemnation as her girlhood friend, the beautiful Lorene, sets off for a glamorous though loveless and rootless life in the cities, while Maisha leads a quiet but fulfilling life as housewife and mother. Luella was told she was ugly by a disappointed mother, who wanted to spare her child the pain of taking a chance on love. When Luella takes that chance with a con man, he abandons her; but she stumbles onto real love and is too apprehensive to realize it at first. Vinnie sacrificed her youth for her children after her husband abandoned her. She nearly loses an opportunity for love, until she's awakened by a friend's sudden good fortune. Cooper brings her deceptively simple storytelling style to this rich collection of stories about ordinary women living day to day, looking for love, accumulating sorrows and regrets, and searching for meaning. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.