The basic premise of The Conure Woman and Other Tales is that an old man wants to prevent this couple from the North from purchasing a plantation in North Carolina. Uncle Julius is a former slave who still lives in the post-war south. When John and Annie visit the plantation, they are greeted with apprehension. Julius does all he can to prevent them from buying the place. In the end he finds that storytelling is his greatest asset. He uses his long-winded tales to distract the couple into indecision, all the while trying to teach them something about the immorality of slave ownership.
This collection reads much like a southern American iteration of the One Thousand and One Nights. In that story this eastern king has decreed that he will marry a new bride every morning and behead her at sundown because he is so unsatisfied with the women in his life. When Scheherazade finds herself being forced to wed the king, she cleverly tells him a story on their wedding night and refuses to end the cliffhanger until the following night. The king spares her in order to hear the rest of the story, which she again ends on a cliffhanger. She repeats this pattern for 1,001 nights, until the king has fallen madly in love with her and reverses his original decree about beheadings. In this book, Uncle Julius is playing the role of Scheherazade. He's hoping to put off an unpleasant event for so long that it never happens, and he does so by telling a bunch of engaging stories. Meanwhile, he's choosing his words carefully, telling stories which depict morals which would seem to counteract John and Annie's intentions for buying the plantation.
Uncle Julius sets himself up as the savior of the saves who still live in Patesville. He does not want these ignorant northerners to purchase the plantation because he sees the potential ill which would befall those people who are still slaves. In order to convince John and Annie to pass on the property, he starts telling these stories of voodoo curses and bad fortune. He's trying to teach them that things are not always what they appear on the surface. Despite the appeal of owning such a property, Julius skillfully warns the couple that the plantation is more trouble than it's worth. He's a tricky guy, no doubt a conjure man of his own making.
