The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales - Softcover

Chesnutt, Charles W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 148256257X ISBN 13: 9781482562576

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an author, essayist and political activist whose works addressed the complex issues of racial and social identity at the turn of the century. Chesnutt's early works explored political issues somewhat indirectly, with the intention of changing the attitudes of Caucasians slowly and carefully. His characters deal with difficult issues of miscegenation, illegitimacy, racial identity and social place. The stories in "The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales" were Chesnutt's first great literary success. This collection of thirteen short stories is told by a former slave named Uncle Julius to a white couple who have recently moved to the South. Uncle Julius's tales feature supernatural elements such as haunting, transfiguration, and conjuring that were typical of southern folk tales. In this collection, "Po' Sandy" recounts how a woman changed her lover into a tree to try and protect him. Another story, "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny," tells the tragic story of a slave woman who is parted from her baby when the plantation owner sells her for a race horse.

About this title

Review:

"The superb editorial work of Richard H. Brodhead has given us an excellent basis on which to continue the reinterpretation of Chesnutt that is underway. An important forerunner of Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, among others, Chesnutt is a writer of interest in many fields and a key voice in nineteenth-century African-American culture."
--Eric J. Sundquist," The Journal of American History"

"Finally, we have Charles W. Chesnutt's conjure woman stories as he wrote them, not as Houghton Mifflin edited them. This collection is a landmark in American literary publishing for it helps us to understand the pressures exerted upon all authors and especially on African American writers. More important, these wonderful stories are now available to a new generation of readers." Cathy N. Davidson"

"The publication of the conjure tales of Chesnutt constituted a crucial development in the history of African American [literature]. Yet up to now no one has attempted to do what Brodhead has done--namely, collect all the stories in this vein and publish them with an introduction that explains their import individually, serially, and as a collection. . . . His introduction augments the best scholarship that's been done on Chesnutt with his own broad expertise in the history of American fiction and his acute readings of individual Chesnutt tales."--William L. Andrews, University of Kansas

About the Author:

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932) was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South, where the legacy of slavery and interracial relations had resulted in many free people of color who had attained education before the war, as well as slaves and freedmen of mixed race. Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the director and producer Oscar Micheaux. Chesnutt also established what became a highly successful legal stenography business that provided his main income.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 148256257X
• ISBN 13: 9781482562576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192