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jonmhansen's review against another edition
4.0
An underread classic. Dialect is a bit of a challenge, but worth it.
whatchareadingheather's review against another edition
3.0
*listened on audiobook*
I definitely need to re-read visually because I feel like some of the stories blended together a bit while listening on audiobook but overall I still enjoyed the folklore aspect of it as it felt like I was actually sitting in and listening to storytime.
I definitely need to re-read visually because I feel like some of the stories blended together a bit while listening on audiobook but overall I still enjoyed the folklore aspect of it as it felt like I was actually sitting in and listening to storytime.
stacialithub's review against another edition
4.0
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.
whilhelminaharker's review against another edition
5.0
Utterly haunting and captivating. This needs to be on a lot more reading and school curriculums.
cmbohn's review against another edition
4.0
Themes: slavery, race, magic, sneaky ways for the black man to get his way over the white man
Setting: North Carolina pre-Civil War and about 1880s
Loved these little short stories. All told by Uncle Julius, who manages to use the stories to get what he wants out of the rich white Northerners, one of whom suspects what he's up to, but gives in all the same. These are told in heavy dialect, the kind that makes Huck Finn and Uncle Remus look simple, so if that's going to bother you, don't pick it up. I usually don't mind that, but I admit that I found it slow going. It helped me to imagine that I heard it told out loud, like a Brer Rabbit story, but it wasn't a quick read. Still, that made it even more fun, because the stories were long enough to finish a couple at a time and then come back for more. My favorites were the first one, the story of the missing will, and the slave owner who got goophered into a slave.
Setting: North Carolina pre-Civil War and about 1880s
Loved these little short stories. All told by Uncle Julius, who manages to use the stories to get what he wants out of the rich white Northerners, one of whom suspects what he's up to, but gives in all the same. These are told in heavy dialect, the kind that makes Huck Finn and Uncle Remus look simple, so if that's going to bother you, don't pick it up. I usually don't mind that, but I admit that I found it slow going. It helped me to imagine that I heard it told out loud, like a Brer Rabbit story, but it wasn't a quick read. Still, that made it even more fun, because the stories were long enough to finish a couple at a time and then come back for more. My favorites were the first one, the story of the missing will, and the slave owner who got goophered into a slave.
sweetestsinner's review against another edition
3.0
The Librivox audio version was so well performed. I found it really difficult to read myself because of the dialect
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
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.
vasha's review against another edition
4.0
What an amazing surprise! Kept me puzzling over the layers of ambiguity found in these tales, apparently comic dialect stories framed in the condescending voice of a white narrator (apparently the white readers of the original didn't always notice how Chesnutt was satirizing this narrator, and nodded right along with him); Uncle Julius, in the stories, has a variety of purposes for his storytelling: the one the narrator notices is a self-interested one (but he is maybe not always right about the self-interested motive he attributes); then there is the appeal to the sympathies of the narrator's wife; then there are subcurrents of connection to the land and the community-building role of magical beliefs and so on... The stories seem to be subversive on so many levels, although Chesnutt's own commentaries on writing them denies much of this subversiveness.