In the following essay, Wonham details Chesnutt's literary career and the author's dialect and non-dialect short stories.

In the following essay, originally published in the American Transcendental Quarterly, in 1990, Fienberg delineates the differences between Chesnutt's The Wife of His Youth, and The Conjure Woman.

In the following essay, Fienberg views Charles Chestnutt's short story “The Wife of His Youth” as a reflection of the author's own efforts to define himself as a black author.

In the following essay, Duncan discusses Chesnutt's probing of race consciousness in the United States and the manner in which the writer's short stories add a “stanza” to the genealogical poem formed by black American literature.

In the following essay, Hathaway compares Chesnutt's pre-Freudian story “The Sheriff's Children” and Langston Hughes's post-Freudian “Father and Son,” and examines how the plots reform the image of the father.

In the following essay, originally published as “Listening to ‘The Goophered Grapevine’ and Hearing Raisins Sing” in American Literary History in 1994, Slote explores race iconography in Chesnutt's short stories and compares it to the iconography used in modern television commercials.

In the following essay, originally published in his To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature in 1993, Sundquist discusses Chesnutt's skepticism about black American folk beliefs regarding the notion of conjuration and the author's emphasis on a rational explanation for the apparent success of curses and cures.