My Reading Abilities Have Been "Goophered!"

Look at all the spoilers for The Blithedale Romance!

Apparently I’m the only person who chose The Conjure Woman as the main research text. I would guess most people steered away from this book because most of it was written in a heavy dialect. At first, it was definitely difficult to read because it wasn’t like typical academic English where one could associate the meaning of a word by the spelling. In fact, I actually needed to sound the words out, or at least pretend I’m speaking with such an accent in my mind, in order to understand what was written. However, after reading much into the text, many of the words begin to repeat and became much easier to read. Although it still requires some mouthing of the words, reading becomes much swifter.

Besides the difficulty in reading the text, the book actually consists of many fascinating short stories that are shared by an ex-slave, Julius. Almost all the stories have a mixture of reality and fantasy. Some of the stories are rather disgusting in what happens. Even though you know it’s not real, it still makes you cringe! Each chapter has its own little story. In the main part of the book, there is an overall story but is also filled with many short tales. In the second part of the book in the Related Tales section, there doesn’t seem to be a chronological flow, or at least not one that’s rather obvious. At least it makes me wonder whether it flows time-wise.

Don’t get discouraged by first impressions. You’ll be surprised how easy you’ll adapt your reading abilities.