| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jeffrey E. Anderson. Conjure in African American Society. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 230. $39.95.

Jeffrey E. Anderson provides a solid summation and overview of magical and religio-pharmacological traditions—captured in the single multivalent word "conjure"—in African American history. Conjure, he writes, was a "form of utilitarian, pragmatic spirituality" (p. 79), a composite of beliefs, suspicions, and actions with roots in African, Native American, and Western European cultures. Anderson's coverage of the African roots and European parallels to African American conjure are familiar from other recent works in the field, most notably Yvonne Chireau's Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003). By contrast, his stress on Native American influences—including animals from the Underworld and the use of "diviners chiefly concerned ... with foretelling the course of individual lives, finding lost or stolen articles, and most important, diagnosing illness" (p. 66)—is a fresh analysis. As well, Anderson's emphasis of Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean influences on the later evolution of conjuring traditions in the United States distinguishes this work.

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