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Conjure Women
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses—are at the heart of this dazzling first novel
WINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • NPR • Parade • Book Riot • PopMatters
“Lush, irresistible . . . It took me into the hearts of women I could otherwise never know. I was transported.”—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses and Away
Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
“[A] haunting, promising debut . . . Through complex characters and bewitching prose, Atakora offers a stirring portrait of the power conferred between the enslaved women. This powerful tale of moral ambiguity amid inarguable injustice stands with Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An engrossing debut . . . Atakora structures a plot with plenty of satisfying twists. Life in the immediate aftermath of slavery is powerfully rendered in this impressive first novel.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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Critic reviews
“Afia Atakora brings the Civil War South to life so beautifully with Conjure Women, a heartbreaking joy to read.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
“If you are grieving for Toni Morrison, Afia Atakora is the young writer to read now: the kind of historical novelist who makes you believe she must have somehow seen the places she describes and known these characters herself. Her astonishing debut takes the reader to a Reconstruction-era Southern plantation, where two little girls—the enslaved child of the local healer and the planter’s cloistered daughter—become unlikely friends. Conjure Women illuminates an unfamiliar corner of Civil War history and brings to life an indelible character whose talents, from midwifery to voodoo, will yield her own unconventional path to power and freedom.”—Nell Freudenberger, author of Lost and Wanted
“In Conjure Women Afia Atakora masterfully centers two generations of women, folk healers who carry the secrets of their community while bearing the brunt of its antebellum past and its reconstructed present. Telling a gripping story at once grand and intimate, Atakora renders humanity in all its beautiful fits and flaws. Page after page, her voice announces itself like a thunderclap. The women in this novel will blessedly stick with you long after the last word has been read.”—Caleb Johnson, author of Treeborne
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The Gospel Singer
- By: Harry Crews, Kevin Wilson - foreword
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A gifted, idolized singer returns to his poor hometown and a life and family he is so far removed from he now holds them in contempt. The Gospel Singer reveals the absurdity of blind religious faith and idol worship and the hypocrisy that results with the offering of money or sex. Crews grapples with race, gender, religion, and place and steps back to divulge the secrets of his characters - including a dead girl awaiting the gospel singer’s melodious eulogy, his dysfunctional family, a murderer, the zealous town residents, and a traveling freak show.
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The gospel singer
- By L. Welsh on 07-13-22
By: Harry Crews, and others
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Uncle Tom's Children
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."
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I am Speechless, Absolutely Breath Taking!,
- By Lisalisa on 09-26-20
By: Richard Wright
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Mountain Laurel
- By: Lori Benton
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ian Cameron, a Boston cabinetmaker turned frontier trapper, has come to Mountain Laurel hoping to remake himself yet again - into his planter uncle’s heir. No matter how uneasily the role of slave owner rests upon his shoulders. Then he meets Seona - beautiful, artistic, and enslaved to his kin. Seona has a secret: She’s been drawing for years, ever since that day she picked up a broken slate to sketch a portrait. When Ian catches her at it, he offers her opportunity to let her talent flourish, still secretly, in his cabinetmaking shop.
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An emotional journey of want and will, of bondage and freedom.
- By J. Snow on 09-22-20
By: Lori Benton
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The Thread Collectors
- A Novel
- By: Shaunna J. Edwards, Alyson Richman
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.
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Extremely good!
- By Doodle slave on 07-02-23
By: Shaunna J. Edwards, and others
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Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
- Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
- Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African-American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales.
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Great Writer - Great Reader
- By Avid Listener on 09-09-20
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Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
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May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
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Orleans
- By: Sherri L. Smith
- Narrated by: Iesha Nyree, Landon Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
First came the storms. Then came the Fever. And the Wall. After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct...but in reality, a new primitive society has been born. Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader's newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted.
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I'm left devastated
- By Cy Hy on 01-22-22
By: Sherri L. Smith
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The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
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Douglass' Women
- By: Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The best-selling author of Voodoo Dreams focuses on two women who loved the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Anna, a free woman of color, was his rescuer, his loving wife and mother to his children. Ottilie Assing, a white German woman, became his intellectual soul mate and mistress. At times, they all lived under the same roof.
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Captivating
- By MJ on 02-09-24
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A Phoenix First Must Burn
- Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope
- By: Patrice Caldwell - editor
- Narrated by: York Whitaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Evoking Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler’s heirs have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that puts Black women and gender-nonconforming individuals at its center. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters through which you cannot help but see yourself reflected.
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Absolutely brilliant
- By Ruthi on 03-11-20
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The Twelve-Mile Straight
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
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Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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Nowhere is a Place
- By: Bernice McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.
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A Mother and Daughter Tear. It. Up.
- By Susie on 01-15-14
By: Bernice McFadden
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Definetely was a letdown.
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In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters - James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna - join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement.
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The Darkest Child
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Skin of the Sea
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Simi prayed to the gods, once. Now she serves them as Mami Wata—a mermaid—collecting the souls of those who die at sea and blessing their journeys back home. But when a living boy is thrown overboard, Simi goes against an ancient decree and does the unthinkable—she saves his life. And punishment awaits those who dare to defy the gods.
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Black history AND black mermaids!!! LOVE IT
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Behold the Dreamers
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Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
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Overhyped
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By: Imbolo Mbue
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Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
- Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Zora Neale Hurston
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African-American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales.
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Great Writer - Great Reader
- By Avid Listener on 09-09-20
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The Vanishing Half
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The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.
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What listeners say about Conjure Women
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- latasha
- 05-05-21
I loved this book!!
I LOVED THIS BOOK! I listened to the audio book which is read by the absolutely fantastic Adenrele Ojo. This is a 5 star performance! She did a great job of bringing these characters and story to life.
This is told in 3 storylines: 1867 Freedomtime (post Civil War), Slaverytime 1854 (pre Civil War) and Surrender 1865. There is the story of Rue, daughter of May belle. They are slaves, owned by Master (Marse) Charles. May Belle is known for her hoodoo and doctoring. She keeps the slaves healthy, long living and the babies alive and then there is Varina, daughter and disappointment of Master Charles and her mother. There are so many other great characters in this book that I loved a lot- Jonah, Ma Doe, Airey, Ol' Joel..They are all wonderful.
The story goes back and forth between these 3 main characters and weaves the most heart breaking, tragic and beautiful story. I have an extremely hard time with slavery, racism and all the horrors that go along with that. I wasn't sure if I would be able to handle or finish this book. I picked it up for the Hoodoo, I stayed for the characters. There was parts that were hard to hear (or read)but Rue and May Belle got me through it.
These characters are so beautiful. They are so real and human and complex. The struggle of daily life and the challenges they face, the relationships they form, Afia Atakora spins it together so beautifully and creates such a rich story. I can't wait to see what she does next. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this author.
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- daintysteppin
- 07-03-23
Wonderful book all around
I truly enjoyed this book. It was very well written yet the narrative was complex and rich. The characters were multifaceted and carried a story of both strength and suffering.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-10-21
A great plot about family and community
I thought this book described the characters, their development, and their familial relationships really well.The plot was always busy, although at times confusing because so much was happening. The book overall was enticing and kept me engaged.
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- Arlethia Boykin
- 07-05-23
Black women are the Blueprint.
This book depicts that statement perfectly.(My title to this review). I know this is a work of fiction, but I couldn't help but imagine what it was like living in those times. Black Women having birthed the people who built this country and kept it running and having to be every single persons "everything", counselor, midwife, etc, and to be subjected to SA, human trafficking etc. This book isn't explicit in its depiction of abuse, but just knowing my people actually suffered at the hands of people who couldn't even manage anything in their lives without us upsets me deeply. I love the complex way of the Conjure Women. I wish they knew their power. I pray for a rise in this era of powerful Conjure Women to set the world right! Awesome book, I would love to see a movie be created, and I would love to star in it(for real!!) God bless you all.
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- Rebecca
- 06-16-21
If you love history
This is story define rich vivid history with diversity of different character struggles. A must read.
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- Kenya Harrison
- 08-03-22
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!!!
I can't put into words how much I enjoyed this read. The ending was perfect!
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- Moonflower
- 03-28-24
Title is misleading
I was so excited to read this book with all the great reviews and was looking forward to a magical historical story rich in hoodoo which was only superficially sprinkled here and there.
While the author’s writing is very vivid, lush and poetic, there is barely any conjuring going on.
It had just a little bit of root work. The main character Rue made so many stupid decisions that she got on my last nerve so it was hard to care about or root for her.
And why would May Belle Rue’s mother make a tipsy turvy doll that seemed to bind her daughter to the slave masters daughter when she warned her that they are not friends?
It’s mostly about slavery and the immediate aftermath with a disappointing and tragic ending.
The book goes back and forth so much that it was confusing at times despite the headings of either “slavery time” or “freedom time”.
Maybe if the title were different then my expectations would not have ended in me feeling like I wasted my time and money.
This particular narrator though is excellent. I’ve listened to her narrate several books and she makes the books come alive. Sometimes the narrator can make or break an audiobook.
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- Andrea
- 10-05-21
I loved this story!
I didn’t want it to end! The story was soooo good. The narrator was wonderful to listen to. And the ending! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 I just wanted more after the ending.
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- Melanie
- 04-12-21
Good but hard to follow at times
I enjoyed it for the most part but wanted a better climax towards the end,...the history webbed throughout the story was great...but the back and forth made things a little hard
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- Marci Frey
- 02-28-23
Kept Listening and Hoping….
Was hoping for a more intriguing story line. So much going on with so many sub plots that never seemed to be fully developed
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