The Conjure Woman

Set in the pine country of post-Civil War North Carolina, this 1899 story collection frames each tale through Uncle Julius McAdoo, a formerly enslaved man who spins accounts of conjure and transformation for a white Northern couple newly arrived to buy an old vineyard. On the surface his stories entertain, full of root doctors, spells, and people turned into animals or trees. Underneath, they carry the weight of slavery’s cruelties and Julius’s own shrewd purposes, since each yarn tends to serve his interest. Charles W. Chesnutt, among the first African American authors to reach a wide readership, used the plantation-tale form to expose the very system it usually romanticized. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.