this is a book everyone can read and enjoy. A true labor of love for the black woman. I loved learning about natural medicines as a way of survival when there were no resources except the god given ones. moving into Modern conjuring and society use. Very informative and research was amazing. This is one to talk about. it is ancestral history and American history.

I really enjoyed this one. It’s’ a fascinating collection of essays centered around the role of conjure in American history. It’s also a celebration of the legacy of Black women in America generally. So much of this is timely. The essay about indigo and blue jeans could inspire so many think pieces. But my favorite might be the role of midwives in our medical history. It was really fascinating.

I am really glad I read this book! This was a great dive into over 400 years of history and Black Women Magic. I never knew anything about magic/medicine and found the midwifery chapter so interesting. I think Stewart did a great job researching, and the writing was thorough but concise. I didn’t want to put this one down.

This is a BEAUTIFULLY written testament to the wit, wisdom and healing light and energy of black women, no matter the circumstances. The author takes you on a elite but grounded tour of the cultural landscape that they had to navitage for their safety and sanity and their transcendent ability to work their magic and thrive.

The writing is so rich and satisfying and the tales fill you with pride and wisdom. It is such a blessing to have such remarkable historians in our spheres that can tell a tale, give flowers AND continue to light the way! I recommend this book for anyone and especially a fall book club!

📚✨ Book Review: The Conjuring of America by Lindsey Stewart ✨📚

This book wrecked me—in the best way. The Conjuring of America is a powerful, poetic excavation of a neglected part of American history: the monumental contributions of Black women to our culture, medicine, food, spirituality, and so much more.

Lindsey Stewart masterfully blends mythology, ancestral knowledge, and historical truths in a way that’s both beautiful and heartbreaking.

One minute, I was crying from laughter, the next from grief. Don't judge me; I'm emotional, y'all.

A standout moment? The section on Black women’s medical innovations—like their impact on midwifery and remedies that led to staples like Vicks VapoRub—was jaw-dropping. So many women were locked out of the very fields they helped shape.

✨ This isn’t just a book. It’s a call to remember, to honor, and to rethink everything we thought we knew. I’d recommend it to every adult, especially women and history lovers. Honestly, this should be mandatory reading in schools.

🔮 If you love powerful nonfiction, untold stories, or just crave something real—read this. You won’t regret it.

#TheConjuringOfAmerica #LindseyStewart #BookReview #BlackHistory #BlackWomenMatter #NonfictionReads #SpiritualHistory #TikTokReads #GoodreadsReview #MustRead #BookTok #ReadThisBook #Netgalley #Netgalleyreviewer

“It is our job to tend the gardens of our foremothers— to til the four hundred years of Black women’s magic that lie in the soil of this country…”

Reading this felt like a warm hug from the ancestors. It felt like the passing down of generational secrets and memories. It felt like sitting at the feet of our grandmothers and learning all of the ways that Black women have—and still continue—to contribute to the shaping of our country. With a conversational tone and smart writing, Stewart delivers an unapologetic love letter to the foremothers of our culture. Black Girl Magic isn’t just a catch phrase; it’s how Black women have passed down traditions steeped with wisdom and hope, full of the promise of a brighter future even when it seemed impossible. It’s all brilliantly encapsulated in this book that won’t soon be forgotten.

Thank you to Legacy Lit and NetGalley for this ARC!

What do Vicks Vapor Rub, jeans, and quilts have in common?
They originate from black women.
Using anecdotes and historically accurate events, we are brought into the past to see how many of the common uses of items and even modern medicine today have foundations in the Yoruba and indigenous knowledge of black women who were enslaved. Not only that, but we see how white people tried to phase out black women's roles and power.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic by Lindsey Stewart
Published: July 29th, 2025
Publisher: Legacy Lit
Genre: History / Non-Fiction / African-American History / American History / True Crime
Rating: ★★★★★
America was built on the lives and the blood of black women. These are the stories that created America but have been buried. Stewart’s fluid diction and direct conversational tone unearth corners of American history that are rarely discussed publicly. The history behind magic and conjure is written behind racism and the radical Christianity that has deemed the practice was anything but American. These are the stories of survival and how these common rituals, practices, and tasks have been looked down upon do to racism. Read this wholeheartedly and take your time to absorb the content. Something quite spectacular with Stewart’s prose is the way she breaks down each essay into chapters into a digestible format. Each conclusion had me wanting to learn more and grip the full context.
Conjure is a path to freedom and healing. When you look at the medical system today there are many racial biases that prevent proper care. Shunning the conjure women and that path was the beginning to the racist practices that are still taken as fact within the medical system. There are historical contexts to all the biases and judgement that harm the black community. Learn in depth about the way conjure women were demonized as a way to prevent medical care for those America deems less than. This is the history of the othering experience and the core of the racism that leads to the modern way in which racism skews American perceptions of black women.
The prose is a great example of how to weave information, folklore, and context without overloading the reader. A remarkable vision of a narrative that both informs and remains digestible for the readers. I thoroughly enjoyed the section on mermaids and learning the lore around the Orishas. Finally historical context without a euro-centric view of mermaids. Take your time as you read along and really absorb the information. Thank you Netgalley and Legacy Lit for the advanced digital copy. Happy Release Day!
Read more reviews, ARC insights, and recommendations at https://brujerialibrary.wordpress.com/

The Conjuring of America is a mesmerizing journey into the profound magic of Black women, blending history, spirituality, and celebration into a dynamic tapestry. From page one, readers are swept into 400 years of conjure and ancestral wisdom, where mojos and magic pulse with life and song.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to receive and read this Advanced copy for my review
This book intertwines magic with history, revealing that every charm is a form of resistance and every healing is revolutionary. Celebrating the sacred resilience of conjure women, midwives, and everyday heroines, it’s not just a read it’s a powerful call to honor the magic that continues to shape our world.

This was a fascinating read. There are other reviews that better describe how this was about the spiritual and practical methods Black women used based on the traditions from where they were kidnapped from and the adaptions they made to the locations they found themselves in when they were enslaved. They used magic, herbalism, and psychological methods to provide medical help, mental and spiritual health, self-empowerment and rebellion. This tradition continued and influenced further developments in American culture that have been ignored, downplayed and appropriated by others.

I am a historian by education and training. I like documentation. And there was some here. Stewart has probed traditional and often overlooked sources. She also used oral traditions that can't be verified in the way most academics like. But how can they be when many of these traditions come from places that value oral transmission vs. recorded words, when Blacks were forbidden from learning to read and write, and hidden knowledge meant a better chance at survival and power when so much was taken from them. Oral traditions are just as valid as written documents, both of which have their strong points and weaknesses.

I found the part about mermaids the weakest of all the section. It felt to me that it was a bit of a stretch and the author went off on a bit of a tangent.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this. This work brought to light Black women's abilities and contributions to the Black experience and to the overall American history and culture. Words like magic and mojo may put off people who want a more "traditional" history but it would be a mistake to dismiss this work because of that. What some people call magic is what other people call religion. To dismiss religion from history is to ignore a major motivator of humans throughout time and all overall the globe. And it is not just about conjuring but also about medicine, food, and other industries that have been influenced what these women did.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an eARC copy of The Conjuring of America by Lindsey Stewart.

The Conjuring of America by Lindsey Stewart reclaims and reveres a form of knowledge and resistance too often obscured by mainstream historical narratives: the power of Black women's conjure traditions. Blending Black feminist philosophy with cultural history, Stewart delivers a profoundly orifinal and deeply moving exploration of how enslaved and post-enslavement Black women used spiritual and herbal practices as both healing acts and acts of rebellion.

Drawing on oral histories, African diasporic lore-especially that of Oshun-and the voices of Black women writers and community elders, Stewart reveals how conjure emerged from the crucible of American slavery as a coded language of survival, empowerment, and care. The conjure women-Black Mammies, Granny Midwives, Candy Ladies-were not just caretakers or mystics; they were community strategists, spiritual rebels, and architects of liberaiton.

Stewart's work is her refusal to relegate conjure to the realm of folklore or superstition. Instead, she positions it as a practical, evolving philosophy-deeply political, inherently feminist, and inseparable from the struggle for bodily autonomy, civil rights, and Black flourishing. Her analysis connects 19th-century herbal healers to contemporary Black reproductive justice advocates and food justice organizers, showing how these practices echo across generations.

The Conjuring of America is a powerful act of restoration. It insists that the spiritual and practical traditions forged by Black women under the weight of systemic violence are not relics-they are blueprints for enduring freedom.

This is an amazing deep dive into the power and resilience of Black women, specifically Black conjure women, and how they have shaped not just Black culture but American culture. It shows how intertwined history and magic are. I loved learning about the origins of a lot of things that are a big part of my life as a Black woman. I was a big fan of Stewart's emphasis on how conjure is not separate from Christianity/religion but an extension of it. It is widely demonized and shouldn't be as a lot of what we take part in comes from the very conjure magic people are now afraid of. Overall, this was a great read and I can't wait to share it with other people.

One of my top non-fiction reads for 2025. When I saw that this book was being released, I know I had to read it. I've been on a mission when it comes to learning about rootwork and hoodoo (especially after watching Sinners). Learning more about black history and black spirituality, is always a treat. I learned so much from this book and will definitely be recommending it to family and friends snd purchasing a physical copy for myself. So grateful to have the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

The Conjuring of America is a sweeping, enlightening narrative. Lindsey Stewart delivers a powerful exploration into the overlooked legacy of Black women’s magic in shaping American culture. This book is an homage and urgent reminder of how magic has been a force for survival, defiance, and transformation in the United States. Drawing from 400 years of history, the book weaves together personal narratives, historical documentation, and cultural analysis to reveal how these women used conjure to heal, resist oppression, and maintain spiritual resilience. Stewart reframes American history through the lens of Black women’s conjure, crediting them as foundational to the nation’s cultural, medicinal, and spiritual fabric. It offers both a correction to traditional narratives and a celebration of ancestral magic as enduring resistance and empowerment.

Stewart instantly whisked me into a whirlwind of forgotten histories, ancestral gossip, and long-lost legends that my school textbooks definitely forgot to mention. It was like stumbling upon a secret society of Black women who’ve been running the show behind the curtains of history, and now they’ve stepped into the spotlight with jazz hands and receipts. I met the sharp-witted Harriet Jacobs, an African-American abolitionist whose pen cut deeper than a sword; Harriet Collins, a mammy with stories simmering like gumbo; Juliette, Marie Laveau’s enslaved confidante who probably knew more spells than Hogwarts; Gullah Geechee, South Carolina’s go-to conjure queen and keeper of ancestral wisdom; the light-footed cakewalk phenom Sarah Byrd who could dance circles around the patriarchy; and midwife Onnie Lee Logan, who brought babies into this world with strength and a whisper of spiritual grace. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Stewart doesn’t just write about these women, she resurrects them with pages so rich in detail that Google and Wikipedia felt entirely unnecessary! Each chapter is like a fresh episode in a high-drama, soul-deep docu-series, where new heroines emerge and their stories interlace like braids where each strand is glowing with the vibrant ashe of Black girl magic. This book will resonate with readers who enjoys:
-Black feminism and African diaspora studies
-Cultural history and social resistance
-Esoteric traditions and folk healing
-Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how marginalized voices shape national identity

The Conjuring of America is a soulful sip of truth-telling tea brewed with centuries of strength, sass, and survival. Flipping through these pages felt like pulling up a chair at the table of women who have stared down the double-headed beast of racism and sexism with unmatched grace, grit, and a little ancestral side-eye. As a brown woman holding this treasure in my hands, I felt both humbled and electrified. Reading about the lives of Black women across time and space, I saw echoes of my own story, of navigating a world that often tries to shrink us, yet somehow we still rise with the power and unapologetic spirit of our ancestors. It’s comforting and exhilarating to know that while we may walk different paths, the courage to carve a life that is ours is a shared act of rebellion, art, and survival. Women's voices shall not be coffined no more.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this book.

I am in awe of what I'm learning and how Stewart writes. The resilience of Black women is embedded within each chapter and section. From 400 years ago to today Black women & black girls have been defying odds, been creative, and heroic in every scenario they've encountered. I enjoyed reading about the origins of our customs. The habits that are engrained in us socially, historically, and spiritually. Overall, this book has given me a piece of myself and my history that I hadn't known and I'm looking forward to recommending this book to everyone I know.

It's obvious to me that the author put a lot of love and care into this book. Its a reminder of the strength of black women and resilience of black folk magic. And how much both contributed and shaped the U.S. Thank you to netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Apropos of its subject, the book is beautiful, tragic, and messy, but its importance wins out.

The thesis of the book is a study in the contemporary relevance of the Black Diaspora. The culture of the United States is Black, or Black-derived, and that culture derives from religions and other usually mystical traditions of different African nations. It is not in a 1:1 parity, but religion and custom, passing through the extractive process of the Middle Passage and synchronizing with Christianity, resulted in enslaved Black culture.

Most specifically, the book is focused on cultural archetypes. It is like a real life commedia dell'arte, where individuals in the community found stock roles, which also served as stock characters in U.S. culture more broadly. These roles (or those looked at in this book) are those filed by Black women, and are customarily possessed of a mystical quality: the conjure of the title, which, outside of its latinate derived usage in English from Ye Old Norman Conquest, is an AVVE term for magicians in general. These roles are a tribute to Black resilience under slavery and show up repeatedly in U.S. culture, or something deriving from them is.

That is the head of the book. Its heart is somewhere else entirely. The contrast there makes this both a must-read and a read with a full panoply of criticism.

The book is a delight. The author's enthusiasm is infectious, and her passion for her subjects is only matched by her sense of their contemporary import. But unfounded and unsupported assertions are everywhere. I have reservations about raising that as a complaint in that it drifts towards victim-blaming. What is the evidence, you ask. Hmm, funny that, it is almost as if there was systemic effort to obliterate it. Even if not intentionally, it sure is convenient that any effort to rectify the lacunae through reasonable supposition, removes that effort from an ability to challenge the existing paradigm.

When done with the heart of a feather it is necessary; done without it is how you get to racist Atlantis.

The range of influence points here is wide, including medicine, medical procedures, textiles, and food. The story here is important in that this is U.S. history, and the unique role of Black women therein is cool to read about, and particularly with as much spryness as this text does it.

If there is one thing that I wish to ask history writers it is to avoid trying to make everything sexy. History is interesting. You do not need to give it wings. Or indeed a tail, as in the case of this book, namely in the mermaids.

Explaining the mermaids is better done by investigating the more grievous accusation of the book's anti-science position. It is not, and is not so much that it at one point argues that the Black woman's folk magic is the real science, whereas medicine was just Christian-inflected nonsense. Except when the folk magic uses patent nonsense, like feeding people toenails, where the explanation becomes either the psychological treatment of people's ailments, or the representational qualities, such as with the use of menstrual blood in magical rites. I gave the arguments here an excruciatingly close read, yet they never tip over into a full blown truth of the magic, only walking up to the line.

It is not 1996 anymore, folks. When the enemies of science are in charge, the flirting with mystical thinking is not harmless. Both the medical establishment and the folk practices were wrong, but the medicine looks harsher in hindsight. You do not need this to sell me on the idea of the importance of the traditions of Black women in the United States.

The mermaid section gets framed with the 2023 Disney live action remake of The Little Mermaid, staring Halle Bailey, a Black woman, as the titular character. There is a connection between the subject material and mermaids, in at least one folk story. There is also mermaid symbology used by conjure practitioners, as well as seeing the role of aquatic spirits and water deities in general from folklore of different African peoples. This is the part that I think is fruitful in providing context for the beliefs and pointing out missing bits of history.

But the book teases as if this was all some whitewashed version of Yorba mystery rite. Getting through both the the Hans Christian Andersen story and the Disney animated version wihtout an invocation of the queerness in either is something, as is the mention of European, but not any other, traditions of fish-people. None of this is necessary. None of this increases the power of the facts of the book, that is the power of the Black women who contributed to it.

I guess the argument is that I am not the audience for this book in its celebration of Black womanhood for those who have been denied the relevance of it. But I kinda think that I am the audience. I love this material. The body of work here is expressive, contrarian, and detailed, with interesting lines of suggested further research. But, as with some other magical stories by Disney, the grandiosity is the downfall.

My thanks to the author, Lindsey Stewart, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Legacy Lit, for making the ARC available to me.

The Conjuring of America is a breathtaking, bone-deep testament to the enduring power of Black women’s magic. At once a historical reckoning, a spiritual archive, and a richly layered celebration, this book doesn’t just tell a story — it casts one.

From the first page, readers are drawn into a rhythmic, root-deep current that carries them through 400 years of conjure, healing, and ancestral fire. The mojos — crafted from iron nails, red thread, graveyard dirt, and whispered prayers — pulse with life. The mermaids — from Mami Wata’s shimmering wake to Oshun’s golden laughter — sing to the reader with salt-soaked voices. The medicine — herbal, spiritual, communal — isn’t just for the body. It’s for the soul, the spirit, the bloodline.

What makes The Conjuring of America so potent is its refusal to separate magic from history. Every charm is political. Every prayer is resistance. Every healing balm is an act of revolution. Black women’s bodies, stories, and spirits are the thread that stitches this country together — and this book makes sure we feel that, page after page.

Whether it’s the conjure women who outwitted slave catchers, the hoodoo midwives birthing new generations into freedom, or the everyday mamas and aunties who laced their love with spells and strength, this book lifts them all into the sacred light they deserve. It’s as much about surviving as it is about thriving — reclaiming joy, power, and sovereignty in a world that tried to erase it.

For practitioners, descendants, seekers, and scholars alike, The Conjuring of America is more than a book — it’s an initiation. A call to remember. A reminder that Black women’s magic shaped this nation — and it’s still shaping what comes next.