The Wake of the Wind by
J. California Cooper

Nominated by:

The Wake of the Wind is J. California Cooper's third novel, and her most penetrating look yet at the challenges that generations of African-Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home and future for themselves and their families. Set in the South in the waning years of the Civil War, this is the dramatic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and their family set out in search of hope and a piece of land they can work and call their own. Miraculously, they manage not only to survive, but to succeed - their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. But the South during the Reconstruction is not a place that takes kindly to the achievements of former slaves, and as lynchings and injustice become a plague across the region, time and time again they must make the anguished decision to leave their land in search of a safer place. Land, however, is the least of their worldly possessions. Lifee and Mor are the descendants of a long and vital line. Having used their intelligence, strength, and ingenuity to make their place in the new post-Civil War world, they in turn pass those talents along to their children - the next generation to surge forward, accomplishing more than their parents could even dream.At once tragic and triumphant, this epic story that captures with extraordinary authenticity the most important struggle of the last hundred years.
J. California Cooper is the author of the novels Family and In Search of Satisfaction and five collections of short stories, including Homemade Love, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime. She lives in Northern California.

Here's what the members of the Reading Group based at our Raheny branch library think of Wake of the Wind:

This is a poignant story of a group of slaves in the Southern States of America, going from African native to slave, to freedmen, to landowner, to parents. About the year 1764 Suwaibu and Kola were captured and brought as slaves to the Southern States of America. In 1865, before emanicipation, their descendants Mor and Lifee meet on a plantation and are forced to marry. Lifee had been brought up in a family with a girl of her own age, though still a slave, she was educated and had travelled with her mistress to New York and Europe. When the mistress married she was afraid her husband would be attracted to Lifee so she sold her. When the slaves were freed, Mor and Lifee with a group of slaves set out to make a life for themselves. Lifee had been given money, which she managed very cleverly and survived against all odds to live to see her children go to college and own some land. The author describes vividly the awful hopelessness of their lives as slaves and the permanent fear when free of even the poorest whites, who burn their homes and steal what little they have. It is told in the style of a fairy tale. The patois was hard to take at times. Although I liked the story it appeared longer than it actually was.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)