The Conjure Woman

First published in 1899, this book is a collection of antebellum slave folk tales. Written in a smart and ingenious style, the stories in the book offer a realistic portrait of a terrible and strange world where anything can happen. That might make it seem far removed from the modern era, but the way Chesnutt frames the folk tales allows him to comment on contemporary (for his own time, at least) race relations in the South, and to show how they're informed by the past.