In The Absent Man, Charles Duncan attributes Chesnutt's uneasy position to a remarkable narrative subtlety that shields Chesnutt's personal views from the reader. "Her Virginia Mammy," for example, might initially be read as a sentimental love story or as an endorsement of miscegenation, but it is also an incisive satire of white readers and their complacent views on race identity.

In The Conjure Woman Chesnutt divides the narrative duties between a white businessman and an ex-slave to generate a vibrant and convincing cultural dialogue. The first book-length study to explore the impact of Charles Chesnutt's sophisticated, innovative narrative, The Absent Man will provoke renewed discussion and appreciation of his work as a source of today's potent tradition of African-American fiction.