The Conjure Woman

I'm enjoying this book a lot more than I though I would, mostly due to the fact that it isn't the kind of book I thought it was going to be. I had envisioned it as a melancholy book about the evils of slavery, which is a theme I didn't really have much interest in revisiting for the millionth time in my educational career. I was pleasantly surprise to find out that it isn't that at all, and that it was actually pretty lively. I'm originally from the South, and the book really rings true with a lot of aspects of the culture I lived in as a kid.

Storytelling is a big part of Southern culture, and although my grandfather (who I called Poppy Chuck) clearly wasn't a post-emancipation black southerner, I could almost hear him telling these exact same stories. In particular, it reminds me of all the stories I heard about the Bell Witch, a famous local alleged witch in Christian County Kentucky, where I'm from. You can read about the Bell Witch at www.bellwitchfansite.com. Some of my favorite stories that Poppy Chuck told me were about the Bell Witch and his supposed run-ins with her as a boy.

The most striking similarity I see between Uncle Julius' storytelling and my grandfather's is the style. I don't really have the words to describe what is so distinctive about Southern storytelling, but it kind of makes me feel like I'm a little kid again to be reading Conjure Woman.

Being from the South also helps me a lot with the dialiect. It's causing me no difficulty whatsoever. A lot of times when I drink, I slip back into my Southern accent (my friends make fun of me for it), and I can turn it on and off at will, so all I have to do to read The Conjure Woman is turn on in my mind and get to reading. Mine isn't quite as pronounced as what's in the book, but it's close enough to bridge the gap. I actually had a lot more trouble reading Coverdale's story than I have with Uncle Julius'.