My Love Letter to Annie | The Conjure Woman and the Blues in Sinners: Black Women, Spirit Work, and Cinematic Resistance

In Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the character of Annie is many things at once: a healer, a seer, a vessel. She is also, quite crucially, a conjure woman—a figure deeply rooted in Black American cultural and spiritual traditions, whose presence in the film acts as both grounding and resistance. As someone who has been long fascinated with the conjure woman as a literary and cultural figure (fun fact: this is the first book I ever stole from a library), Annie’s quiet yet resolute power felt immediately familiar. She is not flashy. She is not there for show. And she is certainly not new.

The conjure woman has always been here.

Kameelah Martin, in Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo, notes that the term “witch” has historically been racialized and gendered, bound to colonial and European conceptions of spiritual deviance. While early occult traditions in Europe included men, Martin explains that by the fourteenth century, “witch” became synonymous with “woman,” and spirit work was reframed as inherently feminine and inherently threatening (Martin, Chapter 1, p. 15). That suspicion crossed oceans. By the time enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas, those who carried spiritual knowledge (often women) were targeted as dangerous, unruly, and ungodly. Yet they endured. Through midwifery, healing, divination, and ritual, these women preserved ancestral wisdom and reimagined survival.

This is the lineage Annie steps into.

She is not a spectacle of power, but rather a practitioner of konnaissance—a term Martin uses to describe experiential, embodied spiritual knowledge (Chapter 1, p. 18). Annie carries herself with the quiet command of a woman who understands the stakes of being visibly spiritual, especially as a Black woman. She invokes Hoodoo not with drama, but with clarity. Her presence is a corrective to the long-standing demonization of women who engage in “unapproved” forms of knowledge.

And still, Sinners doesn’t reduce her to a relic of the past.

It instead places Annie in direct conversation with another Black American tradition: the blues.

Connecting to the Blues: Cultural Resonance in Sinners

Sinners is undeniably steeped in the blues, not only as a sound, but as a structure of feeling and as a worldview. The slow pacing, the haunting intimacy, the emotional weight of the film all echo what Kameelah Martin refers to as the “blues epistemology” that shapes so much of Black American literature and storytelling (Chapter 4, p. 78). In this framework, blues is not just a genre; it’s a way of surviving grief and remembering oneself through song, spirit, and struggle— a point Coogler makes clear in a scene where the audience gets more context building around the character, Delta Slim.

Annie, while not a blues performer, resonates with the same cultural work. As Martin notes, the conjure woman in blues narratives often emerges in moments of affliction—when lovers have left, when community has failed, when survival is uncertain. She is the one who holds the root bag, stirs the tea, and listens to the ancestors. She provides the antidote to despair (p. 89). In Sinners, Annie operates within this tradition. Her methods are not explained to outsiders. They don’t need to be. They should not be, as Hoodoo is CLOSED. Her practice is rooted in knowing, not proving.

Martin writes, “She may have mojo bags, powders, goopher dust—but she also has memory” (p. 91). This line could easily describe Annie, whose presence in the film is less about what she does and more about what she holds. She is memory incarnate; a living archive of care, resistance, and belief. While the film’s character Sammie channels the emotional urgency of the blues through his music, Annie channels it through ritual. Both characters are haunted in different ways, but Annie is also an anchor. She doesn’t perform. She restores.

That’s what makes Sinners so unique. It doesn’t separate the conjure woman from the blues. Instead, it shows them as deeply entwined. As Martin argues, these two forces are “symbiotic” (p. 78), working together to express and redress the wounds of Black life in America. In this way, Annie becomes part of a longer lineage of conjure women in Black expressive traditions—those who appear in the margins of Ma Rainey’s ballads or Bessie Smith’s laments. Women who are not always named, but always necessary.

Wunmi Mosaku and the Politics of Representation

Beyond the brilliance of the script, what makes Annie’s portrayal in Sinners even more groundbreaking is the casting of Wunmi Mosaku in the role. To see a dark-skinned, full-figured Black woman centered in a leading role—and as a love interest, no less—is a radical visual shift in contemporary cinema. Her body is not background. Her softness is not erased. Her wisdom is not aged into irrelevance. She is desired, respected, and needed.

This is especially meaningful given how mainstream film often portrays conjure women as elderly, mysterious, and marginal. In Sinners, Annie is neither a sidekick nor a stereotype. She is a full person, with her own history, instincts, and quiet gravitas. She is allowed to be—to occupy space without performance or apology.

Mosaku’s performance brings Annie to life with care and intention. She doesn’t overplay the mysticism. She doesn’t flatten her humanity. Instead, she moves with the assurance of someone who understands the cultural lineage she’s stepping into, a role shaped by hundreds of years of spiritual resistance and survival.

Conclusion: A Return to the Root

Annie’s character in Sinners reminds us that conjure is not just a trope. It’s tradition. It is a living, breathing practice of care and knowing that Black women have used for centuries to hold communities together and protect what can’t be protected by law or logic. Through the film’s interweaving of conjure and blues, Ryan Coogler resurrects a narrative space where spirit work is not marginal, but central. Where the Black woman who knows is not feared or fetishized, but revered.

And that reverence matters.

Because to center Annie—without explanation, without dilution, and without shame, is to challenge every cinematic convention that has told us otherwise. It is a ritual of rememory in its own right, an offering not just to our ancestors, but to ourselves.

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Works Cited

Martin, Kameelah L. Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

• Chapter 1: "Thou Shall Not Suffer a Witch to Live: Women and Spirit Work" (pp. 15–31)

• Chapter 4: "Of Blues Narratives and Conjure Magic: A Symbiotic Dialectic" (pp. 77–94)

P.S., I LOVE Dr. Martin's work and encourage you to check her out.

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Hi. I am popping in post publication to list some additional readings, as this seems to be a topic people are showing interest in. I love sharing bits of my bookshelf with people. Please know, this is a deeply intimate practice. I hope you enjoy, learn, and love.

• Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, and Other Such Hoodoo by Kameelah L. Martin

• Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald

• Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

• Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston

• Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes by Georgia Writers' Project, edited by Mary Granger

• Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell

• Witch Queens, Voodoo Spirits, and Hoodoo Saints: A Guide to Magical New Orleans by Denise Alvarado

• The Book of Juju: Africana Spirituality for Healing, Liberation, and Self-Discovery by Juju Bae

• Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals by Luisah Teish

• Voodoo and Hoodoo: The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practitioners by Jim Haskins​