The Conjuring of America
Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2025 | BookRiot's Best Books of 2025 | NPR's New Books to Read | Ms. Magazine's Most Anticipated Feminist Book
A crucial telling of U.S. history centering the Black women whose magic gave rise to the rich tapestry of American culture, wellness, and spirituality that we see today—from Vicks VapoRub and Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, to the magic of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (2023), and the all-American blue jean.
Emerging first on plantations in the American South, enslaved conjure women used their magic to treat illnesses. These women combined their ancestral spiritual beliefs from West Africa with local herbal rituals and therapeutic remedies to create conjure, forging a secret well of health and power hidden to their oppressors and many of the modern-day staples we still enjoy.
In The Conjuring of America, Black feminist philosopher Lindsey Stewart exposes this vital contour of American history. In the face of slavery, Negro Mammies fashioned a legacy of magic that begat herbal experts, fearsome water bearers, and powerful mojos—roles and traditions that for centuries have been passed down to respond to Black struggles in real time. And when Jim Crow was born, Granny Midwives and textile weavers leveled their techniques to protect our civil and reproductive rights, while Candy Ladies fed a generation of freedom crusaders.
Sourcing firsthand accounts the of enslaved, dispatches from the lore of Oshun, and the wisdom of beloved Black women writers, Stewart proves indisputably that conjure informs our lives in ways remarkable and ordinary. Above all, The Conjuring of America is a love letter to the magic Black women used to sow messages of rebellion, freedom, and hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This enlightening cultural history of "conjure" from political philosopher Stewart (The Politics of Black Joy) tracks the magical folk tradition practiced by Black women in America from slavery to the present day. As Stewart explains, conjure is "a mix of spiritual beliefs, herbal rituals, and therapeutic practices" brought to America by enslaved Africans and shaped by Black "conjure women" over centuries. Among Stewart's aims is to demonstrate that conjure has had a wide-ranging and unacknowledged impact on American culture, including everyday products like Vicks VapoRub, an herbal recipe stolen from an enslaved woman by a former master, and the indigo used to create blue jeans, cultivated and popularized by conjure women (indigo was used not just for dyeing textiles but as a birth control method to help prevent enslaved women being impregnated by their masters). As the narrative spans from excavating archetypes like the "mammy" and the "voodoo queen" to historical figures like Marie Laveau, a 19th-century New Orleans herbalist and midwife who would help her clients outwit men, it can grow repetitive, though this has an air of intentionality (images of knotting and weaving are most often repeated). Above all, this succeeds as giving readers the feeling that they're being let in on an ancient secret. It's a delight.
