A review by serendipitysbooks
The Conjure Woman by Charles W. Chesnutt

challenging lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 The Conjure Woman by Charles Chesnutt (the ebook has his name misprinted) is a short story collection published in 1899. John and his wife Annie are Northerners who have recently moved to North Carolina, where they are often entertained by stories of plantation life told to them by Uncle Julius, a formerly enslaved man. The tales all feature conjuring. What’s amusing is the way Uncle Julius uses his stories to manipulate John in to doing what he wants him to. This collection subverted a lot of the accepted norms of its time and criticised plantation life. John is shown to be supercilious and his monologues at the start of each story poke fun at him and men of his type. In addition Julius is far from an infantilised Black man and the stories he recounts show the ways Blacks attempted to use whatever power they could utilise during the slavery era. This was a fun, entertaining read, one important for its time, although I did sometimes struggle with Julius’s dialect as printed.