THE MATTER IS LIFE by J....

THE MATTER IS LIFE by J. California Cooper (Anchor: $10; 227 pp . ). These tales of contemporary African-American life by the National Book Award-winning writer have an exuberant charm that’s almost impossible to resist. Most of the stories are written as monologues by vital, imperious women: The matriarch/narrator of “The Big Day” insists her grandchildren and great-grandchildren address her as “Biggun” because that “granmaw stuff . . . sounds like somethin you snatch off a hog.” In “Vanity,” a devastating portrait of a social-climbing beauty ruined by cocaine and egotism, an all-seeing friend sets the tone for the collection when she comments, “Some people say everybody got a Guardian Angel looks over you. I ain’t sure God got that kind of labor to waste on some people, but if he do, I don’t envy the one was watchin’ over Vanity.” The reader sits up straight and listens respectfully to Cooper’s women, even when the author’s imagination carries her beyond the bounds of credibility, as it does in “The Doras.”