Conjure Women: A Novel | 
pickI thought this was a well written story of two enslaved women and their community through the beginning of the civil war and beyond into abolition times.
May Belle and her daughter Rue are midwives, but also know plant medicine and are healers. Some people refer to them as Conjure Women.
The cover and spine caught my eye, and I‘m glad, the inside is just as good!
so-soI went through this one in fairly large chunks as I was taking care of the doggo alone for 2 weeks but after I put it down it took me longer than expected to pick it back up. The story wasn't complicated to follow and it was interesting to a point. I'm not sure what was lacking in this one to really hold me. I think I found he characters fairly superficial and I wanted more.
This is an enchanting book. The story, so far is told by chapters titled, Slaverytime, Freedomtime, Surrender, The Promise etc. So far pretty good!
pickA story of the beautiful complicated lives of the struggles and magic of women through the end days of slavery, war and abolition. Loved the characters.
pickI had this one for awhile before I picked it up -- and read it in one sitting!! Much more complicated story than it seems on the surface, got me to thinking about all the different kinds of relationships women have. The story jumps around from past to present but it's not confusing, and there's a couple surprising twists along the way.
pickHealing, midwifery, and conjuring are the specialties of a mother and daughter in this saga set entirely on a Southern plantation. It unfolds at a sedate pace in rotating storylines: Freedomtime, Slaverytime, and Wartime. The 1800s are a period that saw major changes, but life for African Americans didn‘t suddenly get easier after emancipation. A debut novel rich in historical detail.
I couldn‘t tell if it was my own personal reading history affecting my reaction OR that Afia Atakora‘s prose reflects the influence of other authors upon her, but as I read I was reminded of: Marlon James‘ Night Women; Coates‘ Water Dancer; Toni Morrison‘s A Mercy; Alice Walker; and even Jane Eyre. Fine company, regardless.
Yeah - my personalise book subscription arrived today. I love unwrapping them every month - each month they send a gem! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
pickI really really enjoyed this. Excellent character building and lots of interesting female relationship dynamics.
so-soThis book moves through two timelines (slavery time & freedom time) and many relationships, centered around healers and their ability to conjure. I kept hoping for deeper relationships and conversations between characters that just didn‘t come. The storyline was interesting and I enjoyed reading a perspective from before the civil war that highlighted healing women in a humanistic and thoughtful way.
pickAn afternoon of reading in the garden, chasing the sun as it moves, meant I finished the book!
I liked it. I liked the female narrator, the other characters who entwined. I liked the switching between times, the historic aspect. Plus the hint of magic, of the power of nature and beliefs. I'd be keen to read more of hers.
Find ing this is interesting enough to keep me reading but equally not intriguing enough to get me thinking about it between reads.
Usually I'm wondering how the stories will blend together, or how it can end, but this one seems explanatory. Which in some ways is good!
Enjoying some of the writing, and I do like the characters and their relationships.
^^”He seemed to want nothing. In Rue‘s mind folks who didn‘t say plainly what they wanted harbored the most pernicious type of wanting.”
312 “Miss Rue had been, all her life, a liar. Over the years, in slaverytime, in wartime, in freedomtime, she‘d lied and said, I know.”
so-soLove a nonlinear plot, but this goes every which way & back again, with a wandering that never gets to a build. Strength of character Rue, like her mother a healer & midwife born into slavery, kept me reading. Mistrust & the OTHER (“friendship” of Rue & plantation mistress Varina, Black-eyed Bean‘s light skin in a Black family, traditional healer vs. preacher). Southern Gothic, magic, Airey escapes on wings, returns tarred & feathered. Lies. 2020
so-soI‘ve wanted to read Conjure Women for a while now. It just happened to fit this month‘s Uncorked Librarian Reading Challenge, so I grabbed it up. It‘s beautifully written, but left me wanting more.
Full review: https://wildwoodreads.com/2021/03/26/conjure-women-by-afia-atakora-review/
Just received this from an indie book store mail club called The Drop. Yay! For historical fiction. Added to my April #bookspin list.
pickThis is the story of an enslaved girl and her mother living in the South told pre and post Civil War. It had a unique plot and was a magical story, but I had some confusion when the story changed time frames or perspectives.
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I forgot to post this for the #20in4 Readathon! I read 5 hours and 29 minutes, and finished my book in time for book club. It was well-liked by my book club as well.
Thank you @Andrew65 !
Okay, #lmpbc #groupI, here are my choices for this round! On Such a Full Sea is a dystopian, Unnatural Magic is a fantasy, and the rest are different variations. Note: The Philosopher's Flight is just over 400 pages and The Astonishing Color of After is around the 450 of mark @Readergrrl @Mynameisacolour @tdrosebud
Cleaned the house, ate some lunch. It's sunny outside so we're going to go on a nice long bike ride but first sneaking in some more reading. I'm nervous about what's building between Rue, a conjure woman, and the new preacher in town.
#joyousjanuary
I read about 50 pages last night before I feel asleep. The writing is beautiful and I'm hooked on the characters but there are going to be some tough emotional spots to get through I think. Tucking in for an hour this morning before I go do some chores. #joyousjanuary
Happy Weekend! I'm a little behind on my goals for #joyousjanuary readathon but still feeling hopeful. I have a stack of 5 library books I want to finish this week. I've finished 3 so far but they were the short ones. 😂 I've been very busy with work so I've been having a little bit of a hard time finding large chunks of time to read. Starting this one, which is the 4th book in the stack, tonight and hopefully will make some good progress!
I am not in the right headspace for this. If it weren‘t for my upcoming chat with @GreenGrl87 and @riversong153 I‘d bail.
pickGreat book. To say I enjoyed reading it would be misspeaking but, it was a great fictional account of two women and their lives on the plantation pre and post civil war. A really tough read and many CWs but well researched and well written. I would have liked to read this a little slower but it was a 14 day ebook loan from the library. I will be absorbing and processing this one for a while.
A heads up if you haven‘t started already. The book is good but gets very heavy. I‘m about 65% in and there are some CWs in there. I‘ll label them as spoilers in the comments in case you want them, but you don‘t have to view them if you prefer to go in fresh @GreenGrl87 @Chelleo
2020 was a wild year, but it brought a lot of reading joy. This year I read more than ever, and so many of the books I read were outstanding. My favorite is tagged. More than ever, I‘m grateful for the ability to read and for the authors who put their hearts into their writing.
@BookNAround The tagged book will be my last book of the year - Conjure Women by Afia Atakora and my first book of 2021 will be Here for It by R Eric Thomas #lastfirst
pickThis was a quick read and it was heart breaking. The author goes back and forth in different times, spoken by different voices.
I can‘t even begin to say how much this novel stresses the importance of bodily autonomy.
Black bodies have been ‘policed‘ from the beginning, and it‘s still happening today. Reproductive Justice is EVERYTHING.
I started this last night. I‘m one chapter in so far and it is very interesting. This is a good pick so far! @Chelleo @GreenGrl87 I also really love this beautiful cover.
“Hoodoo,” Miss May Belle used to say, “is Black folks‘ currency.”
Current read from the latest library haul. Pulled me right in.
pickI really enjoyed this read. It was a unique story set in the time of the Civil War on a plantation in the south. It was a really interesting perspective to read from the eyes of former slaves the changes and similarities in their lives prior and after the civil war.
Thank you @riversong153 and @Chelleo our book chats mean the world to me 💕
The next meeting of It‘s Lit! VBC is scheduled for January 15th 5:30pm PST/ 8:30EST. Our next reading selection is Conjure Women by Afia Atakora.
https://meet.google.com/pon-hhjz-pgq
Exactly what a Saturday night should be 😍
bailedI‘ve made it about a third of the way through this one and it‘s just not working for me. It‘s just meh and I feel like I‘ve read this book before. So I‘m moving on.
#bookspinbingo audio edition
pickDifficult read, but beautiful writing. Deserves every bit of the praise and accolades it has received.
Reading a bunch of witchy / magical books right now for a seasonally appropiate post I'm writing
Library hold came in! I've been wanting to read this for a while!
pickAtakora is enormously talented but I did struggle with this due to another bout of ‘rona brain. Set pre and post Civil War it‘s just a litany of horrors, including lynchings, beatings, rape, stillbirths, infant deaths, etc. Oh and a pandemic that is rapidly killing folks. I think I would have appreciated it a LOT more if I was in a better head space but I powered through for book club. 3.5-ish ⭐️.
I really like this book when I‘m reading it but not one I rush to pick up if that makes sense 🤔
Took Miss P for a gloriously long walk and now settling in with my #BookandBreakfast.
Happy Weekend, Litsy fam!
pickThis is an EXCELLENT book by an artistic writer...we experience the world of US plantation slavery through the eyes of a young midwife/healer. We feel her decisions, her focus, and the ever present hardships she sees and is a part of in pre and post civil war. This is an immersive book, and though I worried and stressed along with the characters I witnessed the beauty of hope peeking through the realities.
Since there were still so many books I really wanted to get to in August, I considered not adding anything to my pile of potentials for next month. But even though I like having some semblance of a plan, I hate feeling completely locked in with limited options. I‘m adding these to my pile for September and we‘ll see where things end up! I also still have some digital ARCs that I need to read and I have a few new books coming in next month.
pickThis is one of those books that is a good story with many different layers. You can read it multiple times and get a different story or narrative each time. Really recommend it! I especially loved listening to it on tape.
