January 2012
·
239 Reads
·
4 Citations
The Western journal of black studies
This paper examines Charles W. Chesnutt's use of African American folklore in The Conjure Woman. Specifically, this paper interprets the representation of the oral act of storytelling in the text as an expression of black agency and racial formation. Chesnutt's collection is part of a tradition of Plantation fiction that includes the work of Joel Chandler Harris, an author whose rendition of classical black folkloric tales brought African American folklore into the cultural mainstream. However, Plantation authors frequently deployed racist stereotypes and stock representations of black people in their fiction. Chesnutt's collection, however, demurs from mainstream Plantation fiction in its approach to and understanding of black folklore. Indeed, Chesnutt revises the classical plantation narrative by investing it with racial and political meaning. I therefore argue that Chesnutt's collection of stories may be read as "racial project, " a term used by sociologists Michael Orni and Howard Winant to describe the representational strategies that (re)produce or destroy concepts of race in American society (1994, p. 56). As my readings demonstrate, Chesnutt accomplishes this through his portrayal of "Uncle Julius, " an ex-slave whose "conjure tales " tacitly comment on and disrupt the dominant racial discourse in America society.