Bound and Unbound: Conjure, Survival, and Hidden Resilience of Black Women in Afia Atakora’s Conjure Women
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Afia Atakora's Conjure Women (2020), winner of the Society of AmericanHistorians award, addresses how Conjure operates within the structural violence of enslavement while precariously persisting into the aftermath of emancipation.Set across dual timelines of slaverytime and freedomtime, the novel shows how conjure functions as an indispensable spiritual practice, serving primarily as a conduit for the survival of Black women.Employing Hortense Spillers' theorisation of enslaved women's "ungendering," and "Vestibule," their exclusion from kinship, motherhood, legal personhood, and bodily autonomy under the slavery regime, this paper argues that conjure emerges not as a survival strategy among many, but as the only available agency of asserting selfhood.The paper further explores how Atakora, through the characterisation of Miss May Belle and her daughter Rue, reveals that conjure is the sole medium for exerting authority over bodies, birth, death, and community in a society that grants no legitimate right to survival.The article also highlights how the Simran Kumari and Dinesh Babu P https://iaeme.com/Home/journal/IJELLC 2 [email protected] transmission of conjure from May Belle to Rue becomes the transmission of generational trauma, precluding any resolution beyond sheer endurance.Ultimately, the paper shows how conjure becomes the sole terrain for Black women to sustain, protect and transmit their individuality under conditions of total exclusion.
Author: Simran Kumari
Institution: Central University of Punjab
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7204816218