AMISTAD BOOKPLACE, HOUSTON – J. CALIFORNIA COOPER BOOK SIGNING, 1991

 


This oversized postcard announcement for a book shop appearance by African American author J. California Cooper was mailed on January 5th, 1991 and got to me via Madison, Wisconsin, and who knows where else, in 2025. On Juneteenth appropriately enough—the holiday that commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States.

Also appropriately enough, the book that the author was reading passages from and signing for customers was set during times of slavery and the Civil War. From the ad on the postcard:

“J. California Cooper’s novel, FAMILY, tells the story of four generations of an African-American family whose emotional and spiritual center is Always, a young woman born into slavery. Her mother Clora narrates a tale set in the years just before and after the Civil War. It is a tale in which racism is replaces slavery and humankind continues to suffer from its mental chains.

But Always sets into motion two ironic plans to ensure the deliverance of her children. And with haunting hope and wit, Cooper writes about the ‘wishin’ that can’t be slaved.

FAMILY is a hauntingly beautiful testament to the dignity of the human spirit, to the joy that lies at the center of life, and the inexorable bonds of kinship that join us to one to another.”

J. California Cooper was the pen name for Joan Cooper (1931-2014), was a playwright and author whose awards included Black Playwright of the Year (1978), an American Book Award for Homemade Love (1986) in 1989, a James Baldwin Writing Award (1988), and a Literary Lion Award (1988) from the American Library Association. She published her first of six novels in 1991—Family—the book featured in the postcard announcement for this post.

Originally from Berkeley and Oakland, California, Cooper took inspiration from Tennessee Williams and used her home state for a pen name to help ensure her privacy. Later in life she began to use her given name, Joan.

The Amistad Bookplace, where her Houston reading took place in 1991, opened in October 1989 at 1413 Holman under the partnership of Denise Armstrong and Shirlene Bridgewater of Houston, who cobbled together $2,000 to open the shop (Black Women in Texas History, Texas A&M University, 2008).

The specialty book shop that featured African American authors disappears from Internet searches until a reopening in 2002 under the name Amistad Bookplace II in Prairie View, Texas near Prairie View A&M University. But the history trail goes cold again in 2015 and there’s no evidence that the shop still exists in any location by any name, which makes this postcard a unique and important piece of ephemera for Bibliophemera.

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