American Classics PDF EPUB Audio

The Conjure Woman

First published: 1899
Pages: 131

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Read by James K. White · 3 h 39 min · 7 parts

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The Goophered Grapevine
33:45
Po' Sandy
26:54
Mars Jeems's Nightmare
37:28
The Conjurer's Revenge
28:13
Sis' Becky's Pickaninny
28:00
The Gray Wolf's Ha'nt
32:30
Hot-Foot Hannibal
32:27

The Conjure Woman (1899) is a public domain work.

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About this book

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.

About the author

Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an African American novelist and short-story writer whose work examined race, class, and the failures of Reconstruction. Writing from Cleveland while working as a legal stenographer, he became one of the first Black authors published by major American houses and an influential activist voice.