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The conjure woman12/29/2023 ![]() The first novel has an urban setting with a group of black women who experience life with its oppressions. ), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe ( 1992 Naylor, Gloria. She was appealing to many writers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Giles Cory of the Salem Farms (1868), Arthur Miller in The Crucible (1953), Ann Petry in Tituba of Salem Village (1964), and the French novelist Maryse Condé in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1986).ħ Such characters include (among others) Anyanwu in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed (1980), Old Wife in Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (1980), Indigo in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Aunt Cuney in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Marie-Thérèse in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby (1984), and Lena McPherson in Tina McElory Ansa’s Baby of the Family (1989).Ĩ The four novels are The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills ( 1985 Naylor, Gloria. Tituba confessed to meddling with the devil during her trial and was acquitted after spending one year in prison. Native American or African, her origin has been controversial. Tituba was a slave conjure woman from the late seventeenth century, among the first to be accused of witchcraft in Salem Village and face trial (1692–93). Laveau appears in Hurston’s ‘Hoodoo in America’ (1931) and Mules and Men (1935). She had uncanny powers that she used for her own benefit, and sometimes for others’. John’s Eve festivals at Lake Pontchartrain in the mid nineteenth century. Laveau joined in conjure rituals and liturgical dances in New Orleans’ Congo Square and St. Phillips’s Mojo Hand (1966) Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) and ‘The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff’ (1973) Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) and Ntozake Shange’s Spell#7 (1979).Ħ Marie Laveau (1801?–81), the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, was a conjure woman raised to legendary status. ,, ).Ĥ Major novels written by black male writers in that decade include: Ishmael Reed’s The Terrible Twos (1982), and its sequel The Terrible Threes (Reed 1989) Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale (1982) John Edgar Wideman’s Sent for You Yesterday (1983) Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook (1986) and Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits (1989).ĥ Significant works that tackled conjuration as a black folk icon of spiritual empowerment before the 1980s include Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure Man Dies (1932) Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Mules and Men (1935), Tell My Horse (1938), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) Mercedes Gilbert’s Aunt Sara Wooden God (1938) J. ‘ Contemporary Patterns of Malign Occultism among Negroes in North Carolina’. Chapel Hill: University of North California Press, 1926. ), Puckett ( 1926 Puckett, Newbell Niles. Voodoo, Caribbean in origin, is like a religious cult that is primarily spiritual, but uses magic occasionally (Anderson 2005).ģ Examples of such works include Herron and Bacon ( 1895 Herron, Leonora, and Alice M. The goopher doctor is evil and his/her practices are predominantly harming and can lead to death. The hoodoo doctor uses African, European, and Native American magic. The witch, however, is always a woman dressed in black who uses black magic for evil purposes. The rootworker, usually a woman, manipulates magic to heal. The mambo is a priestess who knows the arts of magic. The conjurer may be a man or a woman who practises magic to make a living, possessing the power to harm or heal. These terms are used interchangeably however, they are not synonymous. ,, ).Ģ The conjurer is not the root doctor, the witch, the mambo, the goopher doctor, the hoodoo doctor, or the voodooist. ‘ Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’. ![]() However, Ruby is not analysed in depth and the focus is on Mama Day (Tucker 1994 Tucker, Lindsey. Tucker examines the three conjure women in the text: Saphhira Wade, Mama Day, and Ruby. ![]() The other article is Lindsey Tucker’s ‘Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’. Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 85, nos 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 121– 39. ‘‘‘THE WORK OF YOUR OWN HANDS”: Doing Black Women’s Hair as Religious Language in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’. Monica Coleman’s ‘THE WORK OF YOUR OWN HANDS’ emphasizes the image of the ‘hand’ in the narrative, its religious implications, and the use of the divine power of ase by both Ruby and Mama Day, plus the use of hair by Ruby as a Bakongo spiritual rite (Coleman 2002 Coleman, Monica. There are, however, two articles that take an interest in Ruby, but each adopts a different perspective from mine. 1 In most articles on Mama Day, Ruby is mentioned in passing, if at all.
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