Tales of Conjure and The Color Line: 10 Stories

Charles Waddell Chesnutt

Mar 2012 · Courier Corporation

About this ebook

A pioneer in the development of fiction giving voice to the African-American experience, Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932) found literary success with his "conjure tales" — vignettes from black folk life, recounted partially in the vernacular — and later with his "stories of the color line," which addressed more directly the problems of race in America.
This outstanding, affordable volume presents a selection of the best of both conjure and color line tales. Ten stories include "The Goophered Grapevine," widely considered Chesnutt's best work, "Po' Sandy," "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny," "The Doll," "The Wife of His Youth," "Dave's Neckliss," "The Passing of Grandison," "A Matter of Principle, "The Sheriff's Children," and a wry look at the American intelligentsia, "Baxter's Procrustes."
Brimming with wit, charm, and insight, these stories testify to the qualities that have earned Chesnutt an enduring place in American literature and have made his fiction required reading for scholars and students of African-American history and culture. This edition features an informative Introduction by African-American literature expert Joan Sherman that provides valuable background information on Chesnutt and his work.

About the author

An African American born in Ohio, Charles Waddell Chesnutt grew up in North Carolina. At age 25, he returned to Cleveland to raise his family and practice legal stenography. Resisting the temptation to pass as a white man, he made the issue of race and the inequality of African Americans in the Reconstruction South the primary subject of his fiction, essays, and speeches throughout his life. His first story, "The Goophered Grapevine" (1887), was published in the Atlantic Monthly. His major story collections, The Conjure Woman (1899) and The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899), are local-color stories rich in dialect. Uncle Julius, the former slave storyteller, is realistically presented as he tells his Northern white employer tales that show slaves using wit and intelligence to get the best of their masters. Chesnutt's later novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901), stories of passing and interracial relationships, speak more boldly and bitterly against the racial injustices of the South. They were not well received and, despite the more conciliatory tone of his last novel, The Colonel's Dream (1905), his popularity waned and he returned to his legal business. In 1928 the NAACP awarded Chesnutt the Spingarn Medal for distinguished service to the Negro race. Readers today are rediscovering the humor and subtle satire of Chesnutt's stories.