Author Desiree Cooper came to UDM April 12 to discuss her new literary work “Know The Mother.”
The panel discussion took place in the architecture display room.
Cooper’s book consists of many short fictional stories, “flash fiction” of less than a thousand words.
“Flash fiction kind of parachutes you in a moment. It doesn’t give you the novel, because what the writer is assuming is that you’re bringing the novel to the story,” said Cooper. “You have a novel in you.”
To start an open discussion of her book, she read a few of her flash fiction stories to the crowd.
All of her stories share one thing.
“Almost every story is from a female point of view, and I very much feel like that is my story,” she said. “I do feel like there is a universal female experience that I really want to describe.
“Japanese women, white women, African American women have the shared experience of womanhood. It is my hope that the commonality can lead to understanding and ultimately change,” said Cooper.
That change has come in how women are treated in the workplace and in general the injustices all women face in society around the world, she said.
Highlighting one example of female inequality in society, Cooper asked, “How is it that men are the highest paid chefs when women have cooked every meal ever?”
Cooper added, “Equal rights for women is the last human rights. And when you look at how you put family and children into the hands of women and then oppress them, how much sense does that make?”
