It begins with the desire to redeem...
As I stumbled forward, I was racked by a violent feeling of pain and terror. It seemed that I was gradually being forgotten. I felt that I would only be mentioned in passing in these Salem witchcraft trials about which so much would be written later, trials that would arouse the curiosity and pity of generations to come as the greatest testimony of a superstitious and barbaric age. There would be mention here and there of "a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing 'hoodoo.' " There would be no mention of my age or personality. I would be ignored. As early as the end of the seventeenth century, petitions would be circulated, judgments made, rehabilitating the victims, restoring their honor, and returning their property to their descendants. I would never be included! Tituba would be condemned forever! There would never, ever, be a careful, sensitive biography recreating my life and its suffering (I, Tituba... p 110).
If one were to try to pinpoint a moment in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem where the reason for writing the novel is made clear, the above excerpt is that moment. It comes at (arguably) the height of the narrator's plight as she suffers the punishment of being found guilty of practicing witchcraft during the infamous Salem witch trials, which began in 1692. In addition to its expressed act of redemption of the briefly mentioned woman who was from the West Indies in the real life trials, the novel can also be read as a slave narrative told in first person.
Tituba is given voice to tell her own story of slavery, which begins with her birth in Barbados to a young slave woman deemed worthless because of her pregnancy (she was raped on the journey from Africa to Barbados), and who is sent to be the wife of a slave also considered worthless because of his suicidal tendencies. He turns out to be a gentle, caring husband to the pregnant young girl he is given as mate, and a loving father to the child (Tituba) to whom she gives birth. Tituba's early relatively idyllic days spent with her mother and "adopted" father would be rather short-lived, but they become a framing memory, an important recollection of ties to place that sustains her as she journeys from Barbados to North America, from one condition of servitude to another.
In Massachusetts, for instance, she pities the life of the children of her masters, and compares theirs with her childhood: "...Their waxen skin and their bodies so full of promise yet mutilated like those trees that gardeners try to dwarf. In contrast our childhood as little slaves, bitter though it was, seemed glowing, lit up by the joy of our games, our rambles, and our rovings together. We floated rafts made of sugarcane on the rushing streams. We grilled pink and yellow fish on little crisscrosses of green wood. We danced..." And though some may scoff at what they may see as an attempt to romanticize something horrendous--children born into slavery--it's possible also to appreciate (and identify with) the universal longing for home which underlies the narrator's words.
The tradition of the slave narrative, after all, is one in which the narrator seeks to make his/her appeal as universal as possible. Condé's Tituba (her appeal) is universal in that sense. But she is also given unique, specific characteristics. In writing her story (albeit fiction), Condé gives her a history, a people, a country, and she redefines her "witch" image by demonstrating, "the witch, if we must use the word, rights wrongs, helps, consoles, heals..." She gives her a life that is complete with love, a sex life of her own choosing, failures, and triumphs.
In giving her voice, she shows Tituba's ability to learn and use languages and to use religious rhetoric and nuance. Along her journey, Tituba communicates in English, Hebrew, and chants and prays in the language(s) of her ancestors. She also (in the tradition of slave narratives) assumes a specific reader who she addresses from time to time as she relates her story. In one such moment of address, she talks of being devoid of hatred: "Those of you who have read my tale up till now must be wondering who is this witch devoid of hatred . . . For the nth time I made up my mind to be different and fight it out tooth and nail . . . I could only feel tenderness and compassion for the disinherited and a sense of revolt against injustice." And in a final address to the reader, she asks, "Do I have to go on to the end? Hasn't the reader already guessed what is going to happen? So predictable, so easily predictable! And then by telling it, I shall be reliving my suffering over and over again. And must I suffer twice?" Notably, Tituba maintains her own voice throughout the novel, and though her story is a tragic one, the fact that we never lose her (so to speak) gives the story a kind of happy ending. Now whether or not that works, depends on the reader. Tituba, like other slave narrators / writers, appears to address those would-be abolitionists who professed to be Christians and to whom (supposedly) piety, selflessness and undue suffering would be appealing.
(It's possible, considering her novel--in 1986--was the first attempt to remove Tituba from the margins of the witch trial records and give her dignity, that Condé may be appealing to an American audience similar to whom many slave narrators / writers appealed.) Tituba's story is therefore both an important American story, and an equally important Caribbean story. It is also a very captivating read.
The Marlon James connection...
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is a clear predecessor of works like Marlon James's Book of Night Women, which I am happy to tell (those of you who don't yet know) recently won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction. Finalist judge Katherine Vaz described it as possessing fiction's power " to conjure, through character and story, not just the details of human horrors but also how their truth plays out upon the skin, against the backdrop of the world, and upon the hidden emotions of us all. There's no hiding in any era, even one removed from the time being scrutinized." Wonderful words indeed! Sounds like the makings of a scholarly edition, doesn't it?
In this interview with Evan Kerr of Minnesota Public Radio, James talks about the necessity of telling these stories about slavery even though some may not want to hear / read them. I agree with him. And it's good to know the Caribbean has a growing number of such narratives.
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I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, by Maryse Condé (Republished: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 256 pp).
