Conjuring Moments in African American Literature

This book engages the ways African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman in fiction. Kameelah Martin Samuel traces her presence and function in twentieth-century literature through historical records, oral histories, blues music, and collections of African American folklore.

1. 'Thou Shall Not Suffer a Witch to Live': Women and Spirit Work 2. From Farce to Folk Hero; or a 20th Century Revival of the Conjure Woman 3. Troubling the Water: Conjure and Christ 4. Of Blues Narratives and Conjure Magic: A Symbiotic Dialectic