Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo

195 Pages·2012·0.95 MB·English

Conjuring Moments in
African American Literature
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Conjuring Moments in
African American Literature
Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo
Kameelah L. Martin
conjuring moments in african american literature
Copyright © Kameelah L. Martin, 2012.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012
All rights reserved.
First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United
States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-44434-2 ISBN 978-1-137-33681-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137336811
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Kameelah L., 1978-
Conjuring moments in African American literature : women, spirit work, and other
such hoodoo / Kameelah L. Martin.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-137-27047-4 (hardback)
1. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. American
fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Literature and folklore—United
States—History—20th century. 4. Magicians in literature. 5. African American women
in literature. 6. African American aesthetics. I. Title.
PS374.N4M365 2013
810.9'896073—dc23
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: January 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Copyright Acknowledgments vi
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 “Thou Shall Not Suffer a Witch to Live”:
Women and Spirit Work 15
2 From Farce to Folk Hero, or a Twentieth- Century
Revival of the Conjure Woman 55
3 Troubling the Water: Conjure and Christ 89
4 Of Blues Narratives and Conjure Magic:
A Symbiotic Dialectic 127
5 Coda: “Literature and Hoodoo . . .
Tools for Shaping the Soul” 159
Notes 165
Works Cited 175
Index 185
Copyright Acknowledgments
Chandra Ya— The Goddess of the Evening Star
Original Artwork by Norman “Selah” Dexter Used by Permission
Selah Vision: Soul of the Brush- Motivational Painter and Graphic Artist
www.selahvision.com /[email protected] /facebook.com/selahvision
youtube.com/selahvision
Hoodoo Say
Words and Music by Eugene Fox
© 1954 (Renewed 1982) TRIO MUSIC COMPANY, INC. (BMI)/
Administered by BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
Hoodoo Blues
Words and Music by Spencer Williams
Copyright © 1924 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP.
Copyright Renewed
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
Gin House Blues
By FLETCHER HENDERSON and HENRY TROY
Copyright © 1926 (Renewed) CHAPPELL & CO., INC. (ASCAP)
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to a number of persons and organizations whose collec-
tive influence and support made the journey to publication possible.
I have had the good fortune of having amazing mentors to guide and
direct my scholarly energy. I would especially like to acknowledge you
and thank you for your unwavering support and encouragement: Dar-
ryl Dickson- Carr, Alfred Young, Georgene Bess Montgomery, and Rich-
ard Yarborough. I would also like to thank Jerrilyn McGregory, Tomeiko
Ashford Carter, and Matt Childs for encouraging me and contributing
to my project in various ways. I owe a special thanks to Shauna Morgan
Kirlew and Patricia Coloma-P eñate, who served as my graduate research
assistants. I truly appreciate your dedication to this project; your time and
energy were invaluable. I would like to thank and acknowledge my edi-
tor, Brigitte Shull; editorial assistant, Maia Woolner; and the anonymous
reviewers for their time and dedication to Conjuring Moments. It was a
pleasure working with you, and I thank you for making publication such
a seamless process.
I would also like to acknowledge the College Language Association
(CLA) for providing a forum and safe space to share my work in progress
and my CLA family for their scholarly support, professional network,
and enthusiasm. The South Atlantic Modern Language Association and
the Southern American Studies Association were also inspiring venues
for developing my research. I would like to especially thank the National
Council for Black Studies and Layli Phillips Maparyan for the Cutting-
Edge Gender Research Grant with which I was able to bring this project
to a close and initiate a second one. The manuscript could not have been
completed in a timely fashion without the financial support of the Geor-
gia State University English Department’s Summer Research Enhance-
ment Grant (2007) and the Georgia State University Research Initiation
Grant (2007). I am also grateful to Vanderbilt University’s Issues in Criti-
cal Investigation: The African Diaspora unpublished manuscript com-
petition (2009–1 0). I was a finalist in the inaugural competition, and
I would like to thank Hortense Spillers and the anonymous readers for
such sharp and stimulating constructive criticism.
I would like to thank my GSU colleagues for their support and
encouragement during my time in Atlanta: Elizabeth West, Carol Marsh-
Lockett, Christine Gallant, Mary B. Zeigler, and Cora Presley. Thank
viii Acknowledgments
you for making my years there bearable. I am sincerely appreciative of
James L. Conyers Jr. and the University of Houston Center for the Study
of African American Culture for welcoming me as a visiting scholar and
supporting my efforts rigorously. The University of Houston provided
financial support for this project in addition to offering a supportive,
scholarly environment in which to see the project to completion. Thank
you to Norman “Selah” Dexter for his generous spirit and extraordinary
cover art. Thank you to the reference librarians at the US Copyright
Office for guiding me through the process of tracking down the current
copyright holders for the blues songs quoted in Chapter 4 and to the
librarians of the Roots n’ Blues series of the Southern Folklife Collection
at the University of North Carolina Wilson Library for providing access
to a number of hard-to-find recordings.
Thank you to my family, who love and support me even when they
really have only a vague idea of what I am doing. You all are my big-
gest supporters: Mom, Grama, Auntie Sharon and Uncle Lawrence, Cha-
son, Ashley, Jay, and Tanasa. Thank you to “the kids”— Maria, Ariyanni,
Havana, and Isaiah— for making me smile and keeping me balanced with
all your silliness. Thank you to Julia Livingston, Timothy Lyle, Joy Jones,
Keith Samuel, and the Samuel family for your continued love and sup-
port. And a most generous and humble thanks to my intimate circle of
friends— Deborah Redding, Daaiyah Salaam, Typhany Grier, and Jona-
than Davis— for your endless supply of emotional, spiritual, and mental
support and for always, always seeing me through no matter what life
crises might arise. Ours is a bond of the deepest kind of love and compas-
sion. I simply could not do it without you.
Lastly, I have to thank my former professor Harryette Mullen of Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles, who challenged me as a young and
perhaps overly sensitive master’s student to develop a research project on
the conjure woman that could not be “summed up in two sentences.”
She is truly responsible for setting the fire from which my study of the
conjure woman as literary archetype was born. I hope I have completed
satisfactory work. Thank you for the tough scholarly love and inspiration.
Introduction
Where there are preachers, there are also Conjurers; where there are
conversions, there are dreams and visions. And where there is faith,
there is, and ever continues to be, magic.
—Yvonne Chireau, Black Magic
Yvonne Chireau’s assertion that there is a thin differential line
between religious fervor and the supernatural speaks insightfully about
the permanence of folk belief among people of African descent. In May
2003, that permanence moved to new levels of acceptance when Ameri-
can Express aired an advertisement on primetime network television in
which two members of the NBA team the New Orleans Hornets paid a
local conjure woman—with their American Express card, of course—to
put a “fix” on the jersey of Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant in
anticipation of the first round of the postseason play-off series.1 As the
commercial aired, I began jotting down ideas on how I planned to turn
my fascination with black women and spirit work into a dissertation
project for the completion of a doctoral program I had not yet entered.
I was sighting these women—conjure women—in almost every facet of
American culture: film, television, music, visual art, and most notably in
literature of the African diaspora. I was determined to get down to the
bottom of what was driving these figures to the most visible realms of
popular culture and what exactly was the significance of such hypervis-
ibility. Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit
Work, and Other Such Hoodoo is the culmination of that journey. This
monograph takes as its core focus African American literature and the
conjuring tradition. I am most interested in the point where these two
subjects intersect, particularly as it relates to Africana women and spirit
work. By “spirit work,” I mean to suggest an intimacy with both the
healing and harming ritual practices of African-derived religious prac-
tices that evolved in the New World: obeah, Vodou, Lucumí, espiritismo,
conjure and hoodoo, Candomblé, Voodoo, and others.2 Spirit work also
involves, as the term suggests, communication with supernatural entities
that in some cultures may be referred to as ghosts, ha’ints, specters, or