Overview
Charles Chesnutt was an African American writer. Chesnutt was an early pioneer is writing about African American folklore and racial identity. He wrote about lynchings, segregation and the hypocrisy of American values in the post Civil War South. The stories in The Conjure Woman are written in a frame narrative. The outer frame is told by John a white northerner who bought a vineyard in North Carolina after the Civil War. John and his wife listen to stories told by Julius a former slave who works for them. The stories told by Julius are filled with hauntings, transfiguration, and conjurings. Chesnutt's stories gave 19th century white readers a critical glimps at slavery. Chesnutt and his publishers did not tell the reader that Chesnutt was African American for fear of the acceptance of the book.Synopsis
This early work by Charles W. Chesnutt was originally published in 1899. Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born to freed African-American parents in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in 1858. After having published numerous short stories in journals and magazines, he finally produced this collection, The Conjure Woman, in 1899. It was well received and subsequently set the tone for a glittering literary career. This is a fascinating work, thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in the subject of race in American literary history. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.Editorials
Sacred Life
Charles W. Chestnutt was the most widely read and influential African American fiction writer of his time and the first ever brought to press by a major publishing house. The Conjure Woman introduced the verbal and philosophical richness of African American folk culture to a white readership largely ignorant of true southern black life. Even today, this collection is thought to be among the best representations of life on a southern plantation to be found in American literature.The Conjure Woman is a collection of "conjuring tales" written in rich dialect. Each of the stories masterfully portrays both the inhumanity of plantation life and the cunning wisdom used by many to survive post-Civil War neoslavery. The stories are more accurate than those written by contemporary writers like Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus stories fondly portray life on the plantation. Chestnutt's stories more often reflect the true conditions of plantation life, if in slightly muted tones: forced separation of loved ones, the greed of the slave masters, and the ready violence to be found on the plantations.
Chestnutt's later—and more straightforward—explorations into biracialism, miscegenation, and racisim (The Home Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream) met with so tepid a commercial response that Chestnutt decided to return to his private legal practice in order to support his family. But The Conjure Woman has ensured his reputation as a groundbreaking writer of fiction that truthfully tells the stories of slave life.