Family is the story of slavery as told through the eyes and experiences of one family i particular. Clora is a slave; the story tells how her blood runs from its African roots all the way around the world and mixing with other races, classes and nationalities. Clora gave birth to six children fathered by her master; despite the onset of the Civil War, three survive into adulthood. Clora commits suicide but is still the driving force of the book, acting as its narrator. Throughout the book, she watches over Always, her favorite child, who was sold to her master, Doak Butler. Despite being raped by Butler, and watching whilst he causes the death of her sister, Always becomes the mistress of the farm and is the companion of the Butler's disabled son. Her siblings all find freedom.
The book as a whole is a horrifying look at the way in which black women were treated as slaves. Raped by their masters, their children were sold as slaves to neighboring plantations to help sustain the masters' economy when times were hard. Despite the harrowing portrayal of life for the women enduring it, the story is also, strangely, one of triumph; Clora has a loving spirit that transcends time, and death; she is able to watch over her children like a guardian angel. Slavery causes her to commit suicide, but in death she is able to see her children enjoy a life of emancipation that she was never able to.
Clora's children enjoy diverse lives after the Civil War; they raise families in the post-war South, head north to create new horizons and even live overseas, all determined to remain free of not just the physical chains that bound their mother, but the mental and spiritual ones as well.
Joan Cooper was born in 1931 and under the pen-name of J. California Cooper wrote seventeen plays, one of which, Strangers, earned her the accolade of Black Playwright of the Year in 1978. Cooper was blessed by the guidance and mentorship of Alice Walker who persuaded her to try her hand at writing short stories instead of plays. It was Walker's own publishing company, Wild Trees Press, that published Cooper's first book of short stories, A Piece of Mine, in 1984. Cooper was the recipient of the American Book Award in 1986 for her short story collection Homemade Love.
