A matter of complexion The life and fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt

Charles Chesnutt's story collection, The Conjure Woman, was first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1899 and changed the world of literature. Never before had a major American publishing firm published a work of fiction by an African American writer. Chesnutt was already a successful businessman in Cleveland, having established a profitable court-reporting business. The publication of his book was noteworthy enough for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to run the story, "Charles W. Chesnutt Abandons Stenography for a New Field." Chesnutt rose from humble roots to become a gifted young scholar in rural North Carolina and one of America's leading authors, a story dexterously illuminated by Chakkalakal with panache and insight. Chesnutt seemingly was born with a book in his hand, turning into a voracious reader and autodidact who became a schoolteacher at the tender age of 15. Married at 19, he would go on to become principal of the school before setting out to make a better life for his family. Chakkalakal brilliantly charts Chesnutt's determination and literary success as she conjures an inspirational tale of genius finding its destiny.

In this excellent biography, Chakkalakal (Novel Bondage), an American literature professor at Bowdoin College, chronicles the life of groundbreaking novelist Charles W. Chesnutt (1858--1932). Born to free Black parents who fled the South for Cleveland, Chesnutt became a teacher at age 16--it was one of the few professions open to ambitious young Black men. Aspiring to a more literary line of work, Chesnutt took a stenography job in 1883 and spent his nights writing short stories and novels, becoming in 1887 the first Black author to publish fiction in The Atlantic. Though Chesnutt's day job put his writing on the back burner for nearly a decade, he secured a publishing deal with Houghton Mifflin and in 1899 published the short story collection The Conjure Woman, which marked the first time a major American publisher printed a fictional work by a nonwhite writer. Chakkalakal makes clear the enraging difficulties Chesnutt faced as a Black author in a white publishing industry, noting, for example, that Houghton misleadingly marketed The Conjure Woman as sentimental plantation fiction. She presents Chesnutt as something of a tragic figure for clawing his way to the upper echelon of American letters only to quit amid lackluster sales well over a decade before the Harlem Renaissance renewed interest in his work. An overdue celebration of an unjustly forgotten author, this enthralls. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)