Conjure Woman, The by CHESNUTT, Charles Waddell

Published in 1899 by Houghton Mifflin, Chesnutts first book, The Conjure Woman, was a collection of seven short stories, all set in Patesville (Fayetteville), North Carolina. While drawing from local color traditions and relying on dialect, Chesnutts tales of conjuring, a form of magic rooted in African hoodoo, refused to romanticize slave life or the Old South. Though necessarily informed by Joel Chandler Harriss popular Uncle Remus stories and Thomas Nelson Pages plantation fiction, The Conjure Woman consciously moved away from these models, instead offering an almost biting examination of pre- and post-Civil War race relations.These seven short stories use a frame narrator, John, a white carpetbagger who has moved south to protect his wife Annies failing health and to begin cultivating a grape vineyard. Enamored by remnants of the plantation world, John portrays the South in largely idealistic terms. Yet Uncle Julius McAdoo, the ex-slave and trickster figure extraordinaire who narrates the internal story lines, presents a remarkably different view of Southern life. His accounts include Aun Peggys conjure spells in Mars Jeemss Nightmare, Po Sandy, Sis Beckys Pickaninny, and Hot Foot Hannibal as well as those of free black conjure men in The Conjurers Revenge and The Gray Wolfs Hant. These conjure tales reveal moments of active black resistance to white oppression in addition to calculated (and even self-motivated) plots of revenge. (Introduction provided by Documenting the American South)