As the war progresses and dramatic events occur Rue finds herself empowered in a way she wasn’t before. Miss May Belle sews a flip doll that is a white girl on one side and a black girl when inverted and this emphasizes the girls’ connection to each other as well as the way they are like two sides of the same coin. This creates a power play between the girls and though they seem to share an intimacy Rue is strongly reminded at one point that they can never be friends.
Varina often plays with Rue but there is no question that Varina is the young mistress who is privileged and ultimately destined to own Rue. There’s a curious doubling between Rue and Varina, the red-haired daughter of the plantation owner. It was gripping and I was drawn into the psychological complexity of the characters as the intricacies of their relationships unfold. This builds a lot of tension in the story as many mysteries build and shocking revelations occur. Though she passes much of her knowledge to her daughter, changing circumstances mean that Rue’s craft is under suspicion especially when a new born boy with startlingly black eyes is believed to be a curse or haint Rue has brought upon them: “They had been waiting on reprisal, reprisal for freedom, for the joy of being free, and when that reprisal wasn’t fast coming, they’d settled on the notion that punishment was finally come in the black eyes of a wrong-looking child.” The narrative occurs in two alternating timelines before and after the Civil War - ‘SlaveryTime’ and ‘FreedomTime’. She’s the daughter of the community’s much-respected midwife and conjure woman Miss May Belle. Afia Atakora’s debut novel “Conjure Women” takes place on a Southern plantation and focuses on the life of Rue, a girl born into slavery.
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