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The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
The stories in The Conjure Woman were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success, and since their initial publication in 1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Lesser known, though, is that the The Conjure Woman, as first published by Houghton Mifflin, was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors. This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tale genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published Conjure Woman forms a part. It allows the reader to see how the original volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work.
In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.
Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.
In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.
Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1899
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1572 people want to read
About the author
Charles W. Chesnutt
168 books107 followersCharles Waddell Chesnutt was an author, essayist and political activist, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
February 6, 2025
These linked plantation tales are unique; I’ve never read anything like them. They are all great, if you can work through the dialect of Uncle Julius, the formally enslaved man who tells the tales to his new White employers—a couple that moved down south after the Civil War and hired him. In one tale, an enslaved woman is sold away from her young baby, causing both mother and child to fall into despair. Her child, Mose, is then turned into a mockingbird. He flies to his mother’s new planation and sings to her while she works in the field to try and make her feel better:
“So little Mose sot on a tree in de ya’d en sung, en sung, en sung, des fittin’ ter split his th’oat.”
In another tale, an enslaved man is turned into a tree to avoid being sent around to different plantations and separated from the women he loves. In one tale, a White plantation owner is turned into a slave and forced to walk a mile in their shoes. All the tales involve magic, or conjuring. They also all have some humor in them, as Uncle Julius is telling the tales for a reason, often a self-interested one. But all of the stories also have a purpose, reminding readers of the daily hardships enslaved men, women, and children faced (e.g., being forcefully separated from those they loved).
“The story is true to nature, and might have happened half a hundred times, and no doubt did happen, in those horrid days before the war.”
“So little Mose sot on a tree in de ya’d en sung, en sung, en sung, des fittin’ ter split his th’oat.”
In another tale, an enslaved man is turned into a tree to avoid being sent around to different plantations and separated from the women he loves. In one tale, a White plantation owner is turned into a slave and forced to walk a mile in their shoes. All the tales involve magic, or conjuring. They also all have some humor in them, as Uncle Julius is telling the tales for a reason, often a self-interested one. But all of the stories also have a purpose, reminding readers of the daily hardships enslaved men, women, and children faced (e.g., being forcefully separated from those they loved).
“The story is true to nature, and might have happened half a hundred times, and no doubt did happen, in those horrid days before the war.”
February 5, 2009
On the surface, this book seems to be a series of tales that hark back to the days of plantations and slavery, all connected by The Conjure Woman, who, for a small payment, helps ease the trials and hardships of the slaves by her "goopherin." The book begins when a man, John, and his wife, Annie, move to North Carolina for Annie's health, and they meet Uncle Julius, who becomes their paid servant. Whenever John has plans for his land, he discusses his ideas with Uncle Julius, who then relates a tale about certain slaves on the plantation, generally designed to get John to change his mind. So you might think that you've got a collection of quaint stories about superstition here, but then you start picking up what lies beneath.
When you get into the stories, you start getting the underlying message -- about the harsh treatment of slave owners and their overseers toward their slaves. There are instances of slaves being physically abused, or being separated from their loved ones, especially women and babies. Considering that this was written in the late 1890s, and that the earlier "plantation fiction" glorified the slave-owning life to almost a romantic degree, Chesnutt's work probably set that whole genre on its ear. As an example, you've got Uncle Julius, an ex-slave, doing what he can to preserve his small measure of entrepreneurship by pulling one over on his white boss and his wife.
Overall, it was a fine work. Chesnutt chose to have the slaves and Uncle Julius speak using a Southern dialect, which makes for difficult reading at first until you pick up the rhythm. I would recommend it to readers who are interested in the plantation-era American South and the lives of the slaves, and those who perhaps aren't familiar with this author.
Definitely recommended, and a welcome addition to my library.
When you get into the stories, you start getting the underlying message -- about the harsh treatment of slave owners and their overseers toward their slaves. There are instances of slaves being physically abused, or being separated from their loved ones, especially women and babies. Considering that this was written in the late 1890s, and that the earlier "plantation fiction" glorified the slave-owning life to almost a romantic degree, Chesnutt's work probably set that whole genre on its ear. As an example, you've got Uncle Julius, an ex-slave, doing what he can to preserve his small measure of entrepreneurship by pulling one over on his white boss and his wife.
Overall, it was a fine work. Chesnutt chose to have the slaves and Uncle Julius speak using a Southern dialect, which makes for difficult reading at first until you pick up the rhythm. I would recommend it to readers who are interested in the plantation-era American South and the lives of the slaves, and those who perhaps aren't familiar with this author.
Definitely recommended, and a welcome addition to my library.
November 28, 2025
Goophered
Charles Chesnutt (1858 -- 1932) was a lawyer, businessman, and civil rights activist in addition to his chosen work and dream of becoming a successful early African American writer. His first published collection of stories, "The Conjure Woman" (1899) remains his best-known work. The seven original conjure stories in Cheshutt's book are included in this collection together with several additional conjure tales. My review focuses on the contents of the 1899 collection.
These tales are in the pattern of a story within a story within a story. The stories are set in the years following the Civil War and are told in the voice of John, a white businessman. John and his wife Alice had moved from Ohio, at the advice of Alice's physician, to establish a vineyard in central North Carolina. When they find a suitable property, they meet an aging former slave, Juilus McAdoo, known as "Uncle Julius" whom they hire as a coachman. In his own voice, Julius tells John and Alice pointed stories of plantation life. The stories all center upon conjuring or "goophering" in which spells are cast and people sometimes are transformed into something else, such as a tree or a mule, by a conjurer. In most of the stories, the conjurer is a free black woman, Aunt Peggy. There is a male conjurer in two stories.
When John narrates, the stories are written in clear, formal language. The stories and fables Uncle Julius tells, however, are written in a thick difficult dialect. It takes patience and close reading to understand Uncle Juilus, both in his dialect and in what he says. But the effort is worthwhile. These stories have as their model the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris and similar literature. Chesnutt's models, however, presented an idyllic picture of Southern plantation life in the years before the Civil War. Uncle Julius offers a much harsher portrayal of a world in which people used callously and bought and sold like horses or timber. The emphasis of conjuring is also unique to Chesnutt. It reminded me of some of the work of Zora Neale Hurston.
The stories usually begin with John and Alice facing a situation in their new life as vineyard owners in the South. Uncle Julius then tells a story geared subtly to the issues facing his employers. With their conjuring and improvisatory character, the stories are outrageous and humorous. They show the nature of plantation life and work back to the situations of Alice and John which frame the story. John is a practical man with no particular insight into slavery. He focuses on the conjuring and on some of the manipulative effects of Uncle Julius' storytelling, but the deeper impacts of the stories may be lost on him. John tends to see the South as a slow-paced, peaceful land of romance in accordance with myth. Alice sees somewhat further into the stories. She is able to get beyond the magic and the superstition to get a sense of human tragedy.
Uncle Julius' stories tend to be tangled and improvised as he goes along. The best of them are "The Goophered Grapevine", about a slaveowner who has has vineyard "goophered" to prevent his slaves from eating the grapes and soon bears the consequences, "Po Sandy", which recounts how a woman changed her lover into a tree to try to protect him, "The Conjurer's Revenge" which is about a conjurer changing a man who stole his hog into a mule, and "Sis Becky" which tells the tragic story of a slave woman who is parted from her baby when the plantation owner sells her for a race horse.
In a story called "The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt", John offers the following summary of Uncle Julius' storytelling:
"It was not difficult to induce the old man to tell a story, if he were in a reminiscent mood. Of tales of the old slavery days he seemed indeed to possess an exhaustless store, - some weirdly grotesque, some broadly humorous; some bearing the stamp of truth, faint, perhaps, but still discernible; others palpable inventions, whether his own or not we never knew, though his fancy doubtless embellished them. But even the wildest was not without an element of pathos, -- the tragedy, it might be, of the story itself; the shadow, never absent, of slavery and of ingornance; the sandness, always, of life as seen by the fading light of an old man's memory."
The stories in "The Conjure Woman" and in a subsequent book called "The Wife of his Youth" remain Chesnutt's best-known work. In recent years, there has been some increased interest in his novels. A collection of Chesnutt's writings in the Library of America, "Charles Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays, will allow interested readers to explore further the work of this pioneering African American writer.
Robin Friedman
Charles Chesnutt (1858 -- 1932) was a lawyer, businessman, and civil rights activist in addition to his chosen work and dream of becoming a successful early African American writer. His first published collection of stories, "The Conjure Woman" (1899) remains his best-known work. The seven original conjure stories in Cheshutt's book are included in this collection together with several additional conjure tales. My review focuses on the contents of the 1899 collection.
These tales are in the pattern of a story within a story within a story. The stories are set in the years following the Civil War and are told in the voice of John, a white businessman. John and his wife Alice had moved from Ohio, at the advice of Alice's physician, to establish a vineyard in central North Carolina. When they find a suitable property, they meet an aging former slave, Juilus McAdoo, known as "Uncle Julius" whom they hire as a coachman. In his own voice, Julius tells John and Alice pointed stories of plantation life. The stories all center upon conjuring or "goophering" in which spells are cast and people sometimes are transformed into something else, such as a tree or a mule, by a conjurer. In most of the stories, the conjurer is a free black woman, Aunt Peggy. There is a male conjurer in two stories.
When John narrates, the stories are written in clear, formal language. The stories and fables Uncle Julius tells, however, are written in a thick difficult dialect. It takes patience and close reading to understand Uncle Juilus, both in his dialect and in what he says. But the effort is worthwhile. These stories have as their model the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris and similar literature. Chesnutt's models, however, presented an idyllic picture of Southern plantation life in the years before the Civil War. Uncle Julius offers a much harsher portrayal of a world in which people used callously and bought and sold like horses or timber. The emphasis of conjuring is also unique to Chesnutt. It reminded me of some of the work of Zora Neale Hurston.
The stories usually begin with John and Alice facing a situation in their new life as vineyard owners in the South. Uncle Julius then tells a story geared subtly to the issues facing his employers. With their conjuring and improvisatory character, the stories are outrageous and humorous. They show the nature of plantation life and work back to the situations of Alice and John which frame the story. John is a practical man with no particular insight into slavery. He focuses on the conjuring and on some of the manipulative effects of Uncle Julius' storytelling, but the deeper impacts of the stories may be lost on him. John tends to see the South as a slow-paced, peaceful land of romance in accordance with myth. Alice sees somewhat further into the stories. She is able to get beyond the magic and the superstition to get a sense of human tragedy.
Uncle Julius' stories tend to be tangled and improvised as he goes along. The best of them are "The Goophered Grapevine", about a slaveowner who has has vineyard "goophered" to prevent his slaves from eating the grapes and soon bears the consequences, "Po Sandy", which recounts how a woman changed her lover into a tree to try to protect him, "The Conjurer's Revenge" which is about a conjurer changing a man who stole his hog into a mule, and "Sis Becky" which tells the tragic story of a slave woman who is parted from her baby when the plantation owner sells her for a race horse.
In a story called "The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt", John offers the following summary of Uncle Julius' storytelling:
"It was not difficult to induce the old man to tell a story, if he were in a reminiscent mood. Of tales of the old slavery days he seemed indeed to possess an exhaustless store, - some weirdly grotesque, some broadly humorous; some bearing the stamp of truth, faint, perhaps, but still discernible; others palpable inventions, whether his own or not we never knew, though his fancy doubtless embellished them. But even the wildest was not without an element of pathos, -- the tragedy, it might be, of the story itself; the shadow, never absent, of slavery and of ingornance; the sandness, always, of life as seen by the fading light of an old man's memory."
The stories in "The Conjure Woman" and in a subsequent book called "The Wife of his Youth" remain Chesnutt's best-known work. In recent years, there has been some increased interest in his novels. A collection of Chesnutt's writings in the Library of America, "Charles Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays, will allow interested readers to explore further the work of this pioneering African American writer.
Robin Friedman
February 6, 2017
The Conjure Woman is a series of stories set in the post Civil War south, told by a former slave who now works for the Northern (carpetbagging) family that has bought the old plantation where he lives. While they are much like the Uncle Remus stories of B'rer Fox and B'rer Bear, in that they also make use of a native narrator who talks in dialect, the Conjure Woman stories speak much more openly about the horrors of slavery. That this is done in an off- hand, that's -Just-what-happened tone makes it that much more horrible for the modern reader. Highly recommended.
December 27, 2022
I love to get into some post-Emancipation African American literature because while Chesnutt is careful about how he represents slavery to his white audience, he cleverly makes his distrust and dislike of white institutions of the time known (especially for the modern reader).
February 21, 2023
I loved this book. This is a collection of short stories that fall under one overlaying narrative that read like post-civil war twilight zone episodes. The main narrator is a white man from the north, who moves south for his wives health. While adjusting to his new life on a vineyard he encounters and hires Uncle Julius, the main story teller in this book. Uncle Julius tells Uncle Remus like tales but instead of fables of magical animals, they all focus on a conjure woman (or man- there is both in this book) and the effect of "goophers" (curses/tricks) placed on individuals during the time of slavery. Most of Julius' stories are aimed for a purpose, that almost seem like "getting one over on the white man", but the heart of all the stories lies in making the horrors of slavery palatable for a greater audience. The rose colored glasses of slavery come off for the white reader, but they still have a dash of humor so that the reader can swallow it down. My favorite of the stories was "Mars Jeem's Nightmare". It features a slave owner, who loses out on a marriage for being a slave owner and generally is known for treating his slaves poorly. A curse is put on Mars Jeem's soup and after consuming it he wakes up as a black man, and is forced into slavery on his own plantation. The story serves as a voice to the horror's of slavery while commenting on a society that can't see the evil in something until it bites them in the ass.
The afterward of the book offers the fact that Chesnutt was the first black man published in The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a break down of the cultural significance of stories like Uncle Remus and The Conjure Woman. Overall its a entertaining and relevant read that still has value in todays society despite being published in 1899.
The afterward of the book offers the fact that Chesnutt was the first black man published in The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a break down of the cultural significance of stories like Uncle Remus and The Conjure Woman. Overall its a entertaining and relevant read that still has value in todays society despite being published in 1899.
May 28, 2018
I found it a fascinating & thought-provoking collection of stories (one author, all stories have something to do with "conjuring" or "hoodoo" as it related to the post-Civil War era in rural NC).
Some of the stories were originally bundled & sold as a book, but this edition has stories the author wrote that were not included in the original book edition. (Some of the others were published separately in magazines & such.)
Chesnutt was an educated black man who could "pass" as white. He did not choose that route.
In this collection of stories, he writes in both a "white" & a "black" voice. The conceit surrounding all the stories centers around a northern couple who have relocated to NC for the climate (for the wife's health). Once there, they hire Julius who was once a slave. Most every chapter starts with the white landowner setting the scene, then Julius mentioning something that will lead to a story he will tell his audience. All of Julius' stories are told in heavy dialect & are based on African-American/slave folk tales. It's quite a bit of oral folklore being set into print. Many have an underlying, heartbreaking message related to the horrors of slavery, but are still told in a somewhat understated way.
A very worthy & worthwhile collection to read.
Some of the stories were originally bundled & sold as a book, but this edition has stories the author wrote that were not included in the original book edition. (Some of the others were published separately in magazines & such.)
Chesnutt was an educated black man who could "pass" as white. He did not choose that route.
In this collection of stories, he writes in both a "white" & a "black" voice. The conceit surrounding all the stories centers around a northern couple who have relocated to NC for the climate (for the wife's health). Once there, they hire Julius who was once a slave. Most every chapter starts with the white landowner setting the scene, then Julius mentioning something that will lead to a story he will tell his audience. All of Julius' stories are told in heavy dialect & are based on African-American/slave folk tales. It's quite a bit of oral folklore being set into print. Many have an underlying, heartbreaking message related to the horrors of slavery, but are still told in a somewhat understated way.
A very worthy & worthwhile collection to read.
July 25, 2020
THE CONJURE WOMAN by Charles Chestnutt is a classic bunch of tales, written in the late 1880s, which I'd not heard about until recently. It's a wonderful collection of tales narrated by John, a northern "carpetbagger" who buys a vineyard in North Carolina during Reconstruction.
John, however, is not the narrator that matters. instead, it's Uncle Julius, a freed slave who narrates tales that John relates. The African-American writer Charles Chestnutt's Julius resembles white southern Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus superficially, but with a key different: Julius does not glorify slave masters. Instead, his tales include brutal slave masters, families broken as slaves are sold off, etc. What's more, he hints at slave's deep desire to connect to their African past, with witches, which Julius refers to as the "conjure" women and men, casting spells both on and for fellow African-Americans.
Enjoyable. Fun to read short stories. Though until you get used to how Chestnutt render dialects, similar to Mark Twain, it's tough-going early on. But once you get the knack, it's fun. Four-stars.
John, however, is not the narrator that matters. instead, it's Uncle Julius, a freed slave who narrates tales that John relates. The African-American writer Charles Chestnutt's Julius resembles white southern Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus superficially, but with a key different: Julius does not glorify slave masters. Instead, his tales include brutal slave masters, families broken as slaves are sold off, etc. What's more, he hints at slave's deep desire to connect to their African past, with witches, which Julius refers to as the "conjure" women and men, casting spells both on and for fellow African-Americans.
Enjoyable. Fun to read short stories. Though until you get used to how Chestnutt render dialects, similar to Mark Twain, it's tough-going early on. But once you get the knack, it's fun. Four-stars.
June 22, 2020
3.5⭐️
Sadly was harder to read for me because of the heavy southern accent. But the content is great and should be read at school instead of continually reading the same white classics.
Sadly was harder to read for me because of the heavy southern accent. But the content is great and should be read at school instead of continually reading the same white classics.
June 15, 2016
Chesnutt's collection revolves around the frame narrative of a carpetbagger and his wife (John and Annie) settling in post-Civil War North Carolina to take over a vineyard, where they encounter Uncle Julius, a freed slave who remains on the land as a type of sharecropper/caretaker, working for his new white bosses. Uncle Julius tells dialect stories of old plantation life to "entertain" John and Annie, appearing to be a subversive parody of the Uncle Remus character, whose folksy tales and stories entertained children in Joel Chandler Harris' works. However, Chesnutt's Uncle Julius only gives the appearance of entertaining. In reality, each story is designed to manipulate the Yankees, who have become the de facto new masters (Chesnutt has Uncle Julius "accidentally-on-purpose" slip-up and call John "Mars" [marster] to emphasize this point), in order to get the white folks to do his bidding. Each tale involves conjure men and women who often interfere with and resist their plantation masters through magic and trickery, and directly relate to the way in which Uncle Julius is also trying to resist the influence of his new "masters."
Chesnutt is doing several things here: 1) he's offering a parody of the plantation tradition, as well as the "Uncle Remus"-style tales of Harris, et al. who co-opted African American folklore in the late-nineteenth century; 2) he's suggesting that genuine African American oral tradition is not about entertaining whites, but survival and resistance to the injustice of slavery; 3) he's revealing how the new post-war carpetbaggers were essentially taking the place of old slave masters and tightening the grip on free blacks through a harsh sharecropping system; and 4) he's reinterpreting the horrors of slavery through dark folk tales of murder, deceit, violence, and death.
Although I enjoyed the tales themselves, I couldn't get past the repetitive structure of each story, which always begins with John and Annie contemplating some change of the land, followed by Uncle Julius telling his tale that is somehow related to the change, and concluding with John and Annie being manipulated through the tale into following Uncle Julius' lead. The stories began to be so predictable that I could see exactly how they were going to end. It was also a bit difficult to smoothly read through Uncle Julius' narration due to Chesnutt's use of heavy dialect. (This also seems to be part of the parody of the plantation tradition, as Chesnutt drops hints that Uncle Julius is playing up his subservient role through an exaggerated language in a sly attempt to influence John and Annie to bend to his will.) The tales themselves are engaging and memorable, with a couple reminding me of the Ukrainian tales of Gogol (especially "The Grey Wolf's Ha'nt," with its imagery of a conjure man changing people into animals and riding his victim through the forest at night in order to tire him out). I think I ultimately prefer Chesnutt's later non-conjure tales ("The Wife of His Youth," etc.), but this collection is worth reading as a commentary on the plantation tradition and/or nineteenth century white writers' attempts to repurpose African American oral tradition and folklore.
Chesnutt is doing several things here: 1) he's offering a parody of the plantation tradition, as well as the "Uncle Remus"-style tales of Harris, et al. who co-opted African American folklore in the late-nineteenth century; 2) he's suggesting that genuine African American oral tradition is not about entertaining whites, but survival and resistance to the injustice of slavery; 3) he's revealing how the new post-war carpetbaggers were essentially taking the place of old slave masters and tightening the grip on free blacks through a harsh sharecropping system; and 4) he's reinterpreting the horrors of slavery through dark folk tales of murder, deceit, violence, and death.
Although I enjoyed the tales themselves, I couldn't get past the repetitive structure of each story, which always begins with John and Annie contemplating some change of the land, followed by Uncle Julius telling his tale that is somehow related to the change, and concluding with John and Annie being manipulated through the tale into following Uncle Julius' lead. The stories began to be so predictable that I could see exactly how they were going to end. It was also a bit difficult to smoothly read through Uncle Julius' narration due to Chesnutt's use of heavy dialect. (This also seems to be part of the parody of the plantation tradition, as Chesnutt drops hints that Uncle Julius is playing up his subservient role through an exaggerated language in a sly attempt to influence John and Annie to bend to his will.) The tales themselves are engaging and memorable, with a couple reminding me of the Ukrainian tales of Gogol (especially "The Grey Wolf's Ha'nt," with its imagery of a conjure man changing people into animals and riding his victim through the forest at night in order to tire him out). I think I ultimately prefer Chesnutt's later non-conjure tales ("The Wife of His Youth," etc.), but this collection is worth reading as a commentary on the plantation tradition and/or nineteenth century white writers' attempts to repurpose African American oral tradition and folklore.
July 13, 2021
“..but the most striking were, we suspected, purely imaginary, or so colored by old Julius's fancy as to make us speculate at times upon how many original minds, which might have added to the world's wealth of literature and art, had been buried in the ocean of slavery.”
This book is a collection of conjure folklore as told by Uncle Julius to his employers, John and Annie. The character of Julius, a former enslaved man who often shared stories of the pre-war days is such an endearing and cunning one. His folk tales, as the above quote insists, are beautifully woven and masterful yet they never sugar coat the atrocities of being enslaved. One can only imagine how many talents, minds, and stories never saw the light of day because they were suppressed by slavery.
This book is a collection of conjure folklore as told by Uncle Julius to his employers, John and Annie. The character of Julius, a former enslaved man who often shared stories of the pre-war days is such an endearing and cunning one. His folk tales, as the above quote insists, are beautifully woven and masterful yet they never sugar coat the atrocities of being enslaved. One can only imagine how many talents, minds, and stories never saw the light of day because they were suppressed by slavery.
February 6, 2018
I picked this up for $1, and since it contains early tales of hoodoo, I wanted to see what I could learn from it. The stories are about a brilliant man named Julius who used his stories to aid others, and himself, in working through their cares. I adored this book and found it full of beauty. I wish I'd known Julius.
March 12, 2025
Two courses taught by Professor Neil Daniel at Texas Christian University in the late 1960s helped prepare me for my encounter with Charles W. Chestnutt’s writing. One class was the first of its kind at our school—Black Literature. The next course, Advanced Grammar, revealed that grammar is not just rules but a tool to analyze utterances and their meanings in various dialects. I had not grown up in the American South, so I hadn’t been exposed to the dialect frequently heard among Black people in the Southeast. Before long, however, I continued living in Texas, and then in Kentucky, and eventually in Georgia and North Carolina. I became more attuned to and appreciative of distinctive phrases and constructions of the Black dialect.
Twelve years ago, I picked up a copy of The Tales of Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris, a white journalist from Atlanta, Georgia. Beginning in 1876, Harris used animal fables (Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, et al.) to entertain readers with folk tales collected among Cherokees and formerly enslaved Black people with Caribbean roots. Br’er Rabbit is a trickster, with a heritage going back to Africa. The animals speak in a dialect adapted from the African American dialect Chander heard in Georgia.
Harris meant well. His life had been disrupted by Sherman’s march, which ruined the plantation where Harris was employed as a printer. He had witnessed Reconstruction and sought racial reconciliation. His popular tales were not intended to ridicule Black people. Nevertheless, after his death, white people used his characters as stereotypes that denigrated African Americans. Moreover, Black critics such as author Alice Walker (in 1981), said Harris "stole a good part of my heritage . . . by making me feel ashamed of it.” Thus, the Uncle Remus stories have been judged as racist.
Against this backdrop and after so many years, I finally came across some similar tales in the writing of Charles W. Chestnutt, who identified as Black though being of mixed race, could pass as white. The Foreword by Dr. Sandra M. Grayson places The Conjure Woman broadly in the genre of science fiction. I found the extensive “New Introduction” by Dr. Piper Huguley indispensable preparation for reading these stories. I would even call it a prerequisite both for making sense of these tales and for differentiating them from the tales of Uncle Remus.
In Chestnutt’s work, it’s Uncle Julius who tells the tales, but only within narrative framework of a young white man, John, who has brought his wife Ann from the North to settle on a former plantation in central North Carolina. There John and Ann meet Julius, an aged, formerly enslaved man who has stayed at the plantation and who recollects the stories of “conjuration,” which are the substance of the book.
Chestnutt began publishing his Uncle Julian stories in Atlantic magazine eleven years after Harris started putting the Uncle Remus tales in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The narrator John speaks in “the haughty tone of a colonizer who acts as if he’s doing the natives a favor by even considering the purchase of their lowly land for his capitalist consumer endeavor.” (Piper, p. 8) Chestnutt consistently portrays John's naïveté about his superiority complex throughout the stories.
When I read James, a novel by Percival Everett, in which slaves use the so-called Black dialect exclusively in the presence of white people so as not to sound “uppity,” I felt his strong reaction against using African American Vernacular English in literature. Zora Neale Hurston, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, employed this dialect and once suggested that readers should put these words into their mouths by reading aloud. In fact, even if merely whispering or mouthing the words silently, I felt the necessity of doing so to make sense of the dialect with its different spellings and word order. Learning to recognize the vocabulary and syntax rattled me at first although I appreciate the connection between Uncle Julius’s way of speaking and the magical stories he tells. Because the dialect requires a slower pace of reading, it took me longer to get through this book than I expected.
Are you interested in Black literature? Some scholars credit Chestnutt with being the first published author of Black fiction. I can recommend this book to a reader who keeps it in perspective, and who takes the time to read Dr. Huguley’s excellent introduction and to use the comprehensive glossary prepared by Judith John. To repeat what I said above, please consider Dr. Piper Huguley’s introduction a prerequisite for reading The Conjure Woman.
October 18, 2023
Read this for lit and kind of forgot that it’s an actual book but I think it was a fun read and if there were fantasy girlies in the 1800s this is what they would read
October 21, 2010
Chesnutt should be commended for writing almost exclusively in black vernacular of the post Civil War era in the U.S. from the point of view of a free black man. These stories are exhaustingly difficult to read, yet are also enjoyable if read aloud. The authenticity of the language is undeniable. The conjure tales were fascinating and whimsical. Slaves believed family and love to be more important than freedom in these tales which I found touching. My only criticism is that the tales are strewn together through the device of this Northern white couple who comes to stay in the South. While I recognize that Chesnutt is speaking back at the traditional plantation narrative in which slavery was idealized and there was a sense of nolstalgia for it on the part of the black man, I felt unsatisfied by these two characters.
January 9, 2023
Amazing collection of short stories. Cohesive in that they all share a similar pattern (Couple makes a proposition, Julius tells a story to steer their decision in a certain direction, couple, particularly Annie, follows his suggestion), but still feels fresh and unpredictable each time.
Loved how it blurs imagination and reality, and often leaves you wondering if the distinction is important. Whether one believes or not, the effects of Julius’s myths are still felt.
Interesting and often brutal depictions of class/status—slaves and master, poor whites and slaves, field slaves and house slaves.
Very heavy topics while still weaving in humor.
Loved how it blurs imagination and reality, and often leaves you wondering if the distinction is important. Whether one believes or not, the effects of Julius’s myths are still felt.
Interesting and often brutal depictions of class/status—slaves and master, poor whites and slaves, field slaves and house slaves.
Very heavy topics while still weaving in humor.
February 5, 2021
Just read The Conjure Woman part. I hope to go back and read the other tales when I have more time. I had a much easier time reading the dialect this time than when I read it in undergrad--maybe b/c I was remembering the plots of the stories as I read. Deep memory or something. Anyway this has it all--performance, race, frame stories, interconnected stories, material dynamics of reading--everything I'm into thinking about.
October 17, 2017
What Chesnutt should be wholly commended for is his writing in a black vernacular and providing a freed slave with an opportunity for narrative. What he SHOULDN'T be commended on is how awful and condescending the character of John is. Maybe that's the point. Maybe John's just really fucking annoying.
June 4, 2021
The Librivox audio version was so well performed. I found it really difficult to read myself because of the dialect 😬
October 28, 2021
So much here to unpack, to plumb. All in a pleasurable prose and dialogue, atmospheric and haunting (on multiple levels).
March 13, 2025
Charles W. Chesnutt wrote these stories at first to try his hand at short-story writing, and then at the request of his publisher, wrote a few more. A couple from the north buys a former plantation in North Carolina, and they hire a former slave, Julius, to be their coachman. Each story in this collection centers a story that Julius tells. The white northerner's reactions to the story, and Julius's possible motives for telling them, give the stories additional layers. They are not simple moral tales, but complex invented folklore that give expression to the pain of black slavery in the south. Every time I found myself identifying with the white people in the stories, I was reminded that the white people are NOT the good guys here. In some ways it was eye-opening to just how brutal and heartbreaking slave life was, in a way that was far more qualitative than my previous historical knowledge.
Because I enjoyed the stories so much, and I might end up writing on one of them for my class, I will summarize each story here.
"The Goophered Grapevine" - Julius first meets our narrator and advises him against buying the vineyard with the following story. Master Dugal asks the conjure woman to do something about his grapes so the slaves will stop eating them. She makes it so any black person who eats the grapes will be poisoned and die from them. A new slave, Henry, eats grapes from the vineyard before anyone can warn him not to. To stay alive, the conjure woman advises him to rub his scalp with the grapevine sap. This has the side effect of making Henry young and vigorous when the grapes are growing, and old and decrepit when the vines die down in the winter. Henry's master understands the pattern and starts selling Henry in the spring and buying him back in the winter (for less money) as a scam. However, Master Dugal does not leave the vines alone and some man from up north has him try digging the roots up and putting ashes and other things on them to increase their production. At first it works, but then the whole vineyard dies away, and so does Henry.
"Po'Sandy" - Sandy loses his first wife when his master sells her to a speculator. He marries Tenie, and they love each other. Then Sandy gets sent to another plantation, but before he goes, he tells Tenie that he wishes he could stay. Tenie gets help from the conjure woman to turn him into a pine tree. She is able to turn him back into a man and they are able to still spend some time together this way, until someone cuts down the pine tree that is Sandy and cuts him up for lumber. The master makes a kitchen for his wife out of the lumber, and it later gets turned into a schoolhouse. Julius, who is telling the story, emphasizes how haunted and uncomfortable everyone finds the kitchen and the schoolhouse. He asks if his church people can use the old schoolhouse to meet in and our narrator hastily agrees. Annie, the narrator's wife, convinces him not to use the lumber from the schoolhouse for a new construction project he is working on.
"Mars Jeem's Nightmare" - Solomon, a slave, is upset about being separated from his fiancee by his master, Jim, and asks the conjure woman to do something about it. While Jim is gone, a new slave appears who doesn't know how to act like a slave. The new slave doesn't even know his own name, and the overseer beats him to try to get him to work. After a few weeks, the overseer concludes that he can't get him to work and sends him back. Jim appears shortly afterwards saying that he had an awful dream, fires his overseer, and stops treating his slaves so poorly. This has the benefit of making the town belle like him better. Jim brings Solomon's girlfriend back to the plantation and they have a happy reunion. After Julius tells the story, the narrator agrees to hire back Julius's grandson Tom.
"The Conjurer's Revenge" - Julius tells the narrator how he doesn't like to use mules because it reminds him of the story of Primus. Primus is a slave who loves to go out dancing after dark. One night when returning to the plantation, he finds a shoat (pig) and takes it with him, finding it irresistible. Unknown to him, the shoat belonged to a conjure man. Primus disappears, and soon afterwards, a man sells Primus's master a mule for a good deal. The mule reminds the other slaves of Primus because of how it loves tobacco and wine and gets jealous of Primus's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. As the conjure man is dying, he tries to undo the spell on Primus, but he dies before undoing it is complete, leaving Primus with a foot like a hoof. The narrator buys a horse instead, but the horse ends up being not very strong. He suspects that Julius benefitted from the horse's selling.
"Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" - The narrator expresses skepticism of Julius's lucky rabbit's foot. Julius tells this story in return. Becky, a slave woman, loses her husband when he is sold to another plantation owner. She has a baby boy, Mose, whom everyone dotes on. Becky's owner, Colonel Pendleton, frequently bets on horses and wants to buy a winning horse. He doesn't have enough money to do so, so he exchanges Becky for the horse. Pendleton feels bad about separating the mother from her baby and tells the horsebreeder that he'll throw the child in for free, but the horsebreeder declines. Aunt Nancy, who had helped to take care of Mose, and asks the conjure woman for help when Mose is despondent. The conjure woman arranges for the baby to turn into a hummingbird and then later, a mocking bird, to go fly and see his mother. Both mother and child are temporarily cheered by these reunions. But Aunt Nancy wants them to come back together permanently. So the conjure woman has wasps sting the knees of the racehorse, and sends nightmares to Becky, and so both agree to trade them back. The narrator asked what the story had to do with a lucky rabbit's foot. Julius says that obviously Becky didn't have a lucky rabbit's foot. Later the narrator finds that his wife is in much better spirits, and that Julius gave her his lucky rabbit's foot.
"The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt" - The narrator tells Julius that he's thinking of clearing the swampland into cultivated land. Julius says the land isn't suitable for farming. He tells the story of why. A slave man named Dan and a the conjure man's son both have their eye on the slave woman Mahaly. Dan and Mahaly marry. Dan accidentally kills the conjure man's son in an effort to get him to stop following Mahaly around. Dan buries a charm to protect him from the imminent revenge from the conjure man. It works, and the conjure man decides to get his revenge another way. He tells Dan that a witch has put a curse on him, and that the only way to stop her is to kill her when she's in the shape of a black cat. The conjure man turns him into a wolf so she won't suspect. Then the conjure man turns Mahaly into a black cat and tells her to go home and wait for Dan. Dan kills Mahaly while she is a cat, thinking she is the witch. When he realizes what he's done, he confronts the conjure man, who tricks Dan into making the wolf spell permanent. Since then, Dan has howled around Mahaly's gravestone near the swamp. The narrator tries to verify this story but doesn't find a grave. Instead, he finds a bee tree with convenient access to honey.
"Hot-foot Hannibal" - The narrator's sister-in-law has a falling out with her fiance. The narrator asks Julius to take them the short way, but halfway through, the horse stops and Julius explains why. Chloe, a slave woman, is in love with fellow slave Jeff. However, slave Hannibal is the one who works as a house slave and is slated to marry Chloe. Chloe doesn't like this at all. Jeff asks the conjure woman for help. The conjure woman makes a doll of Hannibal that has chili peppers for feed. Chloe puts it under the stoop where Hannibal works and it makes him stupid and have hot feet all the time. He makes multiple mistakes and is sent back to slave in the fields while Jeff comes back to the house, just like Chloe wanted. At this point, Jeff was supposed to remove the doll, but he forgot about it. Hannibal is jealous and tells Chloe that Jeff is cheating on her with another woman. Hannibal tells her the precise location to find him. (it's where the horse has currently stopped Julius,) Sure enough, she sees him waiting for someone, and he hugs another woman. Chloe tells her master about how Jeff goophered Hannibal with the spice doll and the master sells Jeff to a speculator. Hannibal confesses that he dressed up as a woman to deceive Chloe into thinking Jeff was cheating on her, but it's too late to get Jeff back because he jumped off the steamboat and drowned. Ever since then, Chloe has haunted the area where she though she saw Jeff cheating on her. The narrator and Annie and Annie's sister consent to going around the long way, and they stop to get flowers, and somehow Annie's sister reconciles with her fiance. The narrator suspects this is the true reason they needed to take the long way.
"Dave' Neckliss" - Annie lets Julius have some ham, and it reminds Julius of this story. Dave, a slave, learns to read so he can read the Bible. His master allows him to preach to the other slaves. Dave is allowed to marry Dilsey after the cotton harvesting season. Wiley, another slave, likes Dilsey too. Bacon and other meats start to go missing from the smoke house. A whole ham goes missing, and master Dugal finds it under Dave's floorboard. He punishes Dave by having him wear the ham around his neck like a necklace. Dilsey no longer wants to marry Dave, and he loses his reputation. Dave starts avoiding other people as much as possible, and confesses to a young Julius that he is turning into a ham. Wiley is caught stealing from a smokehouse, and before he is killed in punishment, he confesses to framing Dave. Master Dugal has a party to pardon Dave, but no one can find him. Julius finds Dave's body hanging in a smokehouse.
"A Deep Sleeper" - It appears that Secundus ran away, but he actually just fell asleep for a whole month. He becomes a curiousity to the white people.
"Lonesome Ben" - Ben tries to run away, but ends up back at the plantation where he started. He eats clay to survive, and no one can recognize him--not his wife, not his son, and not even his master. His rejection from his master hurts him most of all. He sees his reflection in the water and doesn't recognize himself. He dies and his body is turned to clay.
"The Dumb Witness" - a master is cruel to his servant and injures her tongue. Then she refuses to tell him the location of the will and deeds that would give him property and riches. After the master dies, it turns out she can speak perfectly fine.
"A Victim of Heredity" - Julius explains that black people love chicken more than white people with this story. A slave owner asks the conjure woman for help in reducing the rations for his slaves. He goes to far and they aren't hungry for anything and have no energy. The only thing they will eat is chicken. The slave owner goes into debt buying chicken so his slaves won't die. Finally, after an enterprising chicken salesman has made a lot of money, the conjure woman is able to undo some of the goophering, but the many slaves still must eat chicken once a week to feel normal.
"Tobe's Tribulations" - Tobe asks the conjure woman to help him run away, because he wants to eat whatever he wants and do whatever he wants, whenever. FIrst she turns him into a bear, but he eats so much that he hibernates instead of running away. Then as a fox, he eats so many chickens that he ends up hunted back to the conjure woman's house. She turns him into a frog so he can escape the hunters, but accidentally uses too much and he never turns back. This is why Julius will never eat frog legs.
"The Marked Tree" - A slaveowner compares the success of his family to the success of an oak tree on his property, and has his firstborn son christened under the tree as a symbol of his prosperity. A slave boy is born the same day as the master's son. He sells the slave boy to pay for his own son's wedding. The boy's mother puts some kind of mark on the tree, and it is involved in the deaths of the slaveowner's other family members and finally his own death. The narrator thinks this is a weird story and wants to buy the property that the tree stump is on. A distant relative sells him the property, and dies after a snake comes out of the stump and bites him. The narrator has the stump removed before his cousin moves in.
Because I enjoyed the stories so much, and I might end up writing on one of them for my class, I will summarize each story here.
"The Goophered Grapevine" - Julius first meets our narrator and advises him against buying the vineyard with the following story. Master Dugal asks the conjure woman to do something about his grapes so the slaves will stop eating them. She makes it so any black person who eats the grapes will be poisoned and die from them. A new slave, Henry, eats grapes from the vineyard before anyone can warn him not to. To stay alive, the conjure woman advises him to rub his scalp with the grapevine sap. This has the side effect of making Henry young and vigorous when the grapes are growing, and old and decrepit when the vines die down in the winter. Henry's master understands the pattern and starts selling Henry in the spring and buying him back in the winter (for less money) as a scam. However, Master Dugal does not leave the vines alone and some man from up north has him try digging the roots up and putting ashes and other things on them to increase their production. At first it works, but then the whole vineyard dies away, and so does Henry.
"Po'Sandy" - Sandy loses his first wife when his master sells her to a speculator. He marries Tenie, and they love each other. Then Sandy gets sent to another plantation, but before he goes, he tells Tenie that he wishes he could stay. Tenie gets help from the conjure woman to turn him into a pine tree. She is able to turn him back into a man and they are able to still spend some time together this way, until someone cuts down the pine tree that is Sandy and cuts him up for lumber. The master makes a kitchen for his wife out of the lumber, and it later gets turned into a schoolhouse. Julius, who is telling the story, emphasizes how haunted and uncomfortable everyone finds the kitchen and the schoolhouse. He asks if his church people can use the old schoolhouse to meet in and our narrator hastily agrees. Annie, the narrator's wife, convinces him not to use the lumber from the schoolhouse for a new construction project he is working on.
"Mars Jeem's Nightmare" - Solomon, a slave, is upset about being separated from his fiancee by his master, Jim, and asks the conjure woman to do something about it. While Jim is gone, a new slave appears who doesn't know how to act like a slave. The new slave doesn't even know his own name, and the overseer beats him to try to get him to work. After a few weeks, the overseer concludes that he can't get him to work and sends him back. Jim appears shortly afterwards saying that he had an awful dream, fires his overseer, and stops treating his slaves so poorly. This has the benefit of making the town belle like him better. Jim brings Solomon's girlfriend back to the plantation and they have a happy reunion. After Julius tells the story, the narrator agrees to hire back Julius's grandson Tom.
"The Conjurer's Revenge" - Julius tells the narrator how he doesn't like to use mules because it reminds him of the story of Primus. Primus is a slave who loves to go out dancing after dark. One night when returning to the plantation, he finds a shoat (pig) and takes it with him, finding it irresistible. Unknown to him, the shoat belonged to a conjure man. Primus disappears, and soon afterwards, a man sells Primus's master a mule for a good deal. The mule reminds the other slaves of Primus because of how it loves tobacco and wine and gets jealous of Primus's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. As the conjure man is dying, he tries to undo the spell on Primus, but he dies before undoing it is complete, leaving Primus with a foot like a hoof. The narrator buys a horse instead, but the horse ends up being not very strong. He suspects that Julius benefitted from the horse's selling.
"Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" - The narrator expresses skepticism of Julius's lucky rabbit's foot. Julius tells this story in return. Becky, a slave woman, loses her husband when he is sold to another plantation owner. She has a baby boy, Mose, whom everyone dotes on. Becky's owner, Colonel Pendleton, frequently bets on horses and wants to buy a winning horse. He doesn't have enough money to do so, so he exchanges Becky for the horse. Pendleton feels bad about separating the mother from her baby and tells the horsebreeder that he'll throw the child in for free, but the horsebreeder declines. Aunt Nancy, who had helped to take care of Mose, and asks the conjure woman for help when Mose is despondent. The conjure woman arranges for the baby to turn into a hummingbird and then later, a mocking bird, to go fly and see his mother. Both mother and child are temporarily cheered by these reunions. But Aunt Nancy wants them to come back together permanently. So the conjure woman has wasps sting the knees of the racehorse, and sends nightmares to Becky, and so both agree to trade them back. The narrator asked what the story had to do with a lucky rabbit's foot. Julius says that obviously Becky didn't have a lucky rabbit's foot. Later the narrator finds that his wife is in much better spirits, and that Julius gave her his lucky rabbit's foot.
"The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt" - The narrator tells Julius that he's thinking of clearing the swampland into cultivated land. Julius says the land isn't suitable for farming. He tells the story of why. A slave man named Dan and a the conjure man's son both have their eye on the slave woman Mahaly. Dan and Mahaly marry. Dan accidentally kills the conjure man's son in an effort to get him to stop following Mahaly around. Dan buries a charm to protect him from the imminent revenge from the conjure man. It works, and the conjure man decides to get his revenge another way. He tells Dan that a witch has put a curse on him, and that the only way to stop her is to kill her when she's in the shape of a black cat. The conjure man turns him into a wolf so she won't suspect. Then the conjure man turns Mahaly into a black cat and tells her to go home and wait for Dan. Dan kills Mahaly while she is a cat, thinking she is the witch. When he realizes what he's done, he confronts the conjure man, who tricks Dan into making the wolf spell permanent. Since then, Dan has howled around Mahaly's gravestone near the swamp. The narrator tries to verify this story but doesn't find a grave. Instead, he finds a bee tree with convenient access to honey.
"Hot-foot Hannibal" - The narrator's sister-in-law has a falling out with her fiance. The narrator asks Julius to take them the short way, but halfway through, the horse stops and Julius explains why. Chloe, a slave woman, is in love with fellow slave Jeff. However, slave Hannibal is the one who works as a house slave and is slated to marry Chloe. Chloe doesn't like this at all. Jeff asks the conjure woman for help. The conjure woman makes a doll of Hannibal that has chili peppers for feed. Chloe puts it under the stoop where Hannibal works and it makes him stupid and have hot feet all the time. He makes multiple mistakes and is sent back to slave in the fields while Jeff comes back to the house, just like Chloe wanted. At this point, Jeff was supposed to remove the doll, but he forgot about it. Hannibal is jealous and tells Chloe that Jeff is cheating on her with another woman. Hannibal tells her the precise location to find him. (it's where the horse has currently stopped Julius,) Sure enough, she sees him waiting for someone, and he hugs another woman. Chloe tells her master about how Jeff goophered Hannibal with the spice doll and the master sells Jeff to a speculator. Hannibal confesses that he dressed up as a woman to deceive Chloe into thinking Jeff was cheating on her, but it's too late to get Jeff back because he jumped off the steamboat and drowned. Ever since then, Chloe has haunted the area where she though she saw Jeff cheating on her. The narrator and Annie and Annie's sister consent to going around the long way, and they stop to get flowers, and somehow Annie's sister reconciles with her fiance. The narrator suspects this is the true reason they needed to take the long way.
"Dave' Neckliss" - Annie lets Julius have some ham, and it reminds Julius of this story. Dave, a slave, learns to read so he can read the Bible. His master allows him to preach to the other slaves. Dave is allowed to marry Dilsey after the cotton harvesting season. Wiley, another slave, likes Dilsey too. Bacon and other meats start to go missing from the smoke house. A whole ham goes missing, and master Dugal finds it under Dave's floorboard. He punishes Dave by having him wear the ham around his neck like a necklace. Dilsey no longer wants to marry Dave, and he loses his reputation. Dave starts avoiding other people as much as possible, and confesses to a young Julius that he is turning into a ham. Wiley is caught stealing from a smokehouse, and before he is killed in punishment, he confesses to framing Dave. Master Dugal has a party to pardon Dave, but no one can find him. Julius finds Dave's body hanging in a smokehouse.
"A Deep Sleeper" - It appears that Secundus ran away, but he actually just fell asleep for a whole month. He becomes a curiousity to the white people.
"Lonesome Ben" - Ben tries to run away, but ends up back at the plantation where he started. He eats clay to survive, and no one can recognize him--not his wife, not his son, and not even his master. His rejection from his master hurts him most of all. He sees his reflection in the water and doesn't recognize himself. He dies and his body is turned to clay.
"The Dumb Witness" - a master is cruel to his servant and injures her tongue. Then she refuses to tell him the location of the will and deeds that would give him property and riches. After the master dies, it turns out she can speak perfectly fine.
"A Victim of Heredity" - Julius explains that black people love chicken more than white people with this story. A slave owner asks the conjure woman for help in reducing the rations for his slaves. He goes to far and they aren't hungry for anything and have no energy. The only thing they will eat is chicken. The slave owner goes into debt buying chicken so his slaves won't die. Finally, after an enterprising chicken salesman has made a lot of money, the conjure woman is able to undo some of the goophering, but the many slaves still must eat chicken once a week to feel normal.
"Tobe's Tribulations" - Tobe asks the conjure woman to help him run away, because he wants to eat whatever he wants and do whatever he wants, whenever. FIrst she turns him into a bear, but he eats so much that he hibernates instead of running away. Then as a fox, he eats so many chickens that he ends up hunted back to the conjure woman's house. She turns him into a frog so he can escape the hunters, but accidentally uses too much and he never turns back. This is why Julius will never eat frog legs.
"The Marked Tree" - A slaveowner compares the success of his family to the success of an oak tree on his property, and has his firstborn son christened under the tree as a symbol of his prosperity. A slave boy is born the same day as the master's son. He sells the slave boy to pay for his own son's wedding. The boy's mother puts some kind of mark on the tree, and it is involved in the deaths of the slaveowner's other family members and finally his own death. The narrator thinks this is a weird story and wants to buy the property that the tree stump is on. A distant relative sells him the property, and dies after a snake comes out of the stump and bites him. The narrator has the stump removed before his cousin moves in.
August 15, 2024
Charles Chesnutt’s conjure stories are like Roman fables set on a North Carolina slave plantation. Characters are turned into animals and other humans, forced to betray themselves and their loved ones, and willing to use one conjurer’s magic against another conjurer’s magic as long as they are able to. And even when slaves are turned into trees, they can’t escape the commodification of one’s body, as they are still chopped up and used by the master.
Each story uses the frame of a northern couple moved south who have turned an old plantation into a grape farm and then delve into the stories of magic told by one of the former slaves, Uncle Julius, who still lives in the area. The two kinds of narrative provide a nice contrast to each other with the rationality of the white narrator on the one hand and the subversive “goopher” tales on the other. The white couple doesn’t believe Uncle Julius’s stories, but they have an aura about them that still gets through much like a ghost story you don’t believe but still makes you huddle under the covers.
In an additional essay at the end of the collection, Chesnutt explains how he heard stories of this nature from his family members, so it’s nice he was able to save them for posterity in this way, even if he has put his own spin on them.
Each story uses the frame of a northern couple moved south who have turned an old plantation into a grape farm and then delve into the stories of magic told by one of the former slaves, Uncle Julius, who still lives in the area. The two kinds of narrative provide a nice contrast to each other with the rationality of the white narrator on the one hand and the subversive “goopher” tales on the other. The white couple doesn’t believe Uncle Julius’s stories, but they have an aura about them that still gets through much like a ghost story you don’t believe but still makes you huddle under the covers.
In an additional essay at the end of the collection, Chesnutt explains how he heard stories of this nature from his family members, so it’s nice he was able to save them for posterity in this way, even if he has put his own spin on them.
March 13, 2024
I've read a few short stories from here before, but have never sat down and read the whole thing. It's an interesting collection of almost folklore tales told by a fictional ex-slave living on a plantation.
Old Julius is on hand when a white couple from the North come down South looking to buy some land and relocate somewhere more quiet. He's got a whole host of tips to help them, but as the couple learn more, they realise that perhaps Julius has some ulterior motives.
This was a bit of a struggle to get through because of the style of writing, but as you start to get used to it it becomes quicker and easier to read. I loved the kind of cyclical nature of the stories and finding out how Julius managed to get his own way each time.
Old Julius is on hand when a white couple from the North come down South looking to buy some land and relocate somewhere more quiet. He's got a whole host of tips to help them, but as the couple learn more, they realise that perhaps Julius has some ulterior motives.
This was a bit of a struggle to get through because of the style of writing, but as you start to get used to it it becomes quicker and easier to read. I loved the kind of cyclical nature of the stories and finding out how Julius managed to get his own way each time.
August 2, 2019
Genuinely enjoyed these stories and the metanarrative spun by Uncle Julius. The better ones are under 'Other Conjure Tales', but the bulk of the book still encompasses quite a few interesting (if predictable) stories that show a unique perspective on a tumultuous period in American history. Julius tricking Northern carpetbaggers to get himself an easier life is always amusing, and takes on quite a politically charged tone in the latter stories, showing both Chesnutt's respect and call for African-American fiction to serve as the backbone for civil rights and a necessary component of emancipation.
May 6, 2021
Although I can appreciate that this is African American literature from the late 1800s, it was a very difficult to read. A few of these works were published highlighting the culture of that time and received recognition. Although I could recognize from the many chapters and stories that this book could be pointing to historical content, it never really worked for me. I spent way too much time trying to decipher what was written as phonetic language of the blacks of that time. This might be an OK book to read as historical content as the individual stories were OK.
November 29, 2023
Some of the books are kind of good, but the other ones are pretty hard to read. I understand the reasoning behind Chesnutt's use of dialect for Uncle Julius but that doesn't make it any easier to understand what like 80% of most of the stories are saying without really trying to parse out every word and taking time to gain understanding. That being said there are some good messages within this book, but I just don't like to do any work when I'm reading. I like a nice and easy read and one where all the dialect is easy to understand.
February 2, 2017
'Po' 'Sandy' is a southern American gothic tale with quintessentially Southern American dialect which makes it rather a difficult task to read. The plot describes an old slave named sandy who comes back as a ghost to haunt due to his repression of being a slave.
October 25, 2021
I don't really like "dialect" writing and this book is full of it. Despite that, the stories were engrossing and I found the Jerry figure subverted a lot of expectations while still maintaining the cleverness of a trickster figure in Black folklore.
October 20, 2017
Book club selection. 3.5 stars.
November 9, 2017
I like this book but I listened to it on audible and it was hard to understand. I think it would have been better to read it in print. Seems to be a good American history lesson at the very least.
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