Orality and the Sermonic Tradition in J. California Cooperʹʹs Some People, Some Other Place- A Study of the Narrative Voice

This article scrutinizes the narrating instance and discourses in J California Cooper’s Some People, Some Other Place (2004). It argues that Cooper writes within a purely African-American literary tradition that exploits the power of orality embedded in the black sermon to bring order in the lives of the audience, more particularly women of different races and walks of life engaged in a quest for selfhood and wholeness. To show that the narrative voice replicates features of the Black sermonic tradition, its orality is first examined and it is argued that the narrator’s language, particularly, in her opening address, resembles a sermon. How character’s speech replicates the function of the Black Sermon in the African-American community has also been illustrated. The paper also explores how the character of Eula Too is emblematic of the truths disseminated in the network of sermons that populate the narrative.