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William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of To Tell a Free Story and editor or coeditor of more than thirty books on African American literature.
Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line
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ISBN-13:
9781420943863
- Publisher: Neeland Media LLC
- Publication date: 10/04/2011
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Sales rank: 253,106
- File size: 1 MB
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Unlike the popular "Uncle Remus" stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt's tales probe psychological depths in black people unheard of before in Southern regional writing. They also expose the anguish of mixed-race men and women and the consequences of racial hatred, mob violence, and moral compromise.
This important collection contains all the stories in his two published volumes, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth, along with two uncollected works: the tragic "Dave's Neckliss" and "Baxter's Procustes," Chesnutt's parting shot at prejudice.
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932) was a lawyer and distinguished writer of fiction whose books include The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream. He received the Spingarn gold medal for his pioneering work depicting the struggles of black Americans.
William Andrews is the author of To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865, and the editor of Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the 19th Century and Three Classic African-American Novels.
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Sacred Life
Charles W. Chestnutt was the most widely read and influential African American fiction writer of his time and the first ever brought to press by a major publishing house. The Conjure Woman introduced the verbal and philosophical richness of African American folk culture to a white readership largely ignorant of true southern black life. Even today, this collection is thought to be among the best representations of life on a southern plantation to be found in American literature.The Conjure Woman is a collection of "conjuring tales" written in rich dialect. Each of the stories masterfully portrays both the inhumanity of plantation life and the cunning wisdom used by many to survive post-Civil War neoslavery. The stories are more accurate than those written by contemporary writers like Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus stories fondly portray life on the plantation. Chestnutt's stories more often reflect the true conditions of plantation life, if in slightly muted tones: forced separation of loved ones, the greed of the slave masters, and the ready violence to be found on the plantations.
Chestnutt's later—and more straightforward—explorations into biracialism, miscegenation, and racisim (The Home Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream) met with so tepid a commercial response that Chestnutt decided to return to his private legal practice in order to support his family. But The Conjure Woman has ensured his reputation as a groundbreaking writer of fiction that truthfully tells the stories of slave life.