Review of Afia Atakora's “Conjure Women”: An Exploration of the Uncharted American Civil War South
Review of Afia Atakora's “Conjure Women”: An Exploration of the Uncharted Civil War South
by Noreen Ocampo
In Conjure Women (Random House, 2020), Afia Atakora propels readers head-first into a largely uncharted corner of the Civil War South as she introduces us to three extraordinary women. Atakora’s breathtaking debut closely follows the resilient Rue, who navigates her roles as a conjure woman, taking up midwifery, healing, and hoodooing like her mother. The novel also tells the stories of Rue’s mother Miss May Belle and their former master’s daughter, Varina, who becomes one of Rue’s lifelong friends. Throughout Conjure Women’s five parts, Atakora transports readers throughout the women’s lives before and after the Civil War, offering portraits of both the mundane and otherworldly, the joyful and heart-wrenching. Released on April 7, 2020, Conjure Women is most prominently a novel about women and an exploration of how they resist against the constraints of their roles and find fragments of love and solace.
Throughout Conjure Women’s five parts, Atakora transports readers throughout the women’s lives before and after the Civil War, offering portraits of both the mundane and otherworldly, the joyful and heart-wrenching.
This novel is undoubtedly a gift. Atakora shines a light on areas of history that are likely unfamiliar to many readers, granting us an unparalleled opportunity to witness life in the Civil War South through the eyes of the novel’s namesake conjure women, Rue and Miss May Belle. As Atakora guides us back and forth in time, she writes with a hand that urges us to never look away, producing images that are nothing short of cinematic and, sometimes, all too vivid. From a series of childbirths, to the black-bean eyes of a newborn boy, to the crack of whips against skin and the networks of scars that come after, to a mother cooking ashcakes for her dead children, to Rue arranging flowers in a dead boy’s casket—Atakora’s voice proves unrelenting. Again and again, she urges readers to face these happenings head-on, performing her own magic as she depicts seemingly indescribable moments with a meticulous, haunting immediacy.
As Atakora guides us back and forth in time, she writes with a hand that urges us to never look away, producing images that are nothing short of cinematic and, sometimes, all too vivid.
Despite unveiling the darkness that plagues the women’s lives, however, Atakora is also sure to celebrate all the light that exists in between. Although she weaves an unrelenting, heartfelt love between Rue and Bean, the black-eyed boy, and a temporary yet fervent passion between Rue and a lover, it was the love between women in the novel that moved me the most profoundly. Atakora unfolds Rue and her mother’s complex relationship, in which Miss May Belle’s love is often harsh yet leaves Rue with a welling sadness and longing when she hears her mother’s name again years after her passing. The love between Rue and Varina is complicated as well; race and social status set these two girls apart from the beginning, yet their friendship survives a lifetime as they stop at no lengths to protect and care for each other.
All in all, Afia Atakora’s debut novel illuminates the Civil War South’s unforgettable conjure women in a way that feels jarringly authentic and immediate from beginning to end. Conjure Women speaks to the resilience of women that persists today, stunningly transcending the time during which the novel is set and continuing to unfold even after you have finished the last page and tucked the book away.
CONJURE WOMEN
By Afia Atakora
416 pp. Random House. $27.00.
Order here.
Noreen Ocampo is a Filipina American writer from metro-Atlanta. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Taco Bell Quarterly, Depth Cues, and Marías at Sampaguitas, among others. She was also a music fellow in the 2019 COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective and enjoys experimenting with various artistic mediums. An undergraduate at Emory University, she majors in Film and Media Studies as well as English with a concentration in multi-ethnic literature.