I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem

“Abena, my mother […].”

Tituba repeatedly refers to her mother as “Abena, my mother” or “my mother, Abena.” The repetition reminds the reader that Tituba is orphaned and outcast; it is simultaneously a reminder that as a fictional recreation of Tituba’s childhood, such details are necessary to provide an accurate depiction of the discrimination against women and people of color.

“They hanged my mother. I watched her body swing from the […] silk tree […] They hanged my mother […] I felt something […] that was never to leave me, a mixture of terror and mourning […] They hanged my mother.”

The repetition of the phrase mirrors how the memory haunts Tituba. Even in falling in love with John Indian, she questions how she can return to the world of white men, given that her mother was raped and killed by white men.

“I want you to know that […] I shall get my revenge.”

In every encounter with tragedy and misfortune that follows, Tituba is plagued by this threat from Susanna. However, it is not the fear of Susanna Endicott that plagues Tituba. Rather, it is Tituba’s awareness that her actions against this woman went against Mama Yaya’s teachings and the belief that spiritual arts are to be practiced only to heal. She struggles with the temptation to use her powers to fight adversity yet, in the end, remains committed to her values.

“I know that the color of your skin is the sign of your damnation.”

The irony behind this statement by Samuel Parris lies in the fact that while Salem denied Tituba her history, the judgment leaves the only black woman to survive. It also reflects the element of parody, as the minister and supposed representative of God justifies hatred of another race. Such exaggerated misconceptions are intentional; through parody, the author seeks to raise the issue of racism, whose roots lie in these Puritan rants, as still present in America.

“What is more beautiful than a woman’s body! Especially when it is glorified by man’s desire!”

Tituba asks this question of Elizabeth Parris, who describes her sexual encounters with her husband as hateful. The conversation contains the element of parody, elucidating how Tituba’s open sensuality contrasts with the Puritan claims of chastity in the face of their legalization of rape and murder of outcasts. It is ironic, as well, that as a slave Tituba embraces a freedom in her awareness of the sacred in her sexuality—a freedom from which the free people are restricted for fear of the punishment.

“A child could not be dangerous.”

This line carries both a foreshadowing and a sardonic tone: The already deceased Tituba, as well as the author and readers with an awareness of the Salem witch trials, know quite well that the children of Salem were dangerous. As descendants of Puritan radicalism, they represent the dangerous narrow-mindedness that Condé suggests is still present in their modern-day descendants.

“Knowledge must adapt to society. You are no longer in Barbados […] You are among monsters who are set on destroying us.”

These words are spoken by a child slave, and Tituba fears that they are her innermost thoughts. The statement echoes the recurring theme of honoring one’s cultural beliefs in the face of adversity and injustice, in that it represents the challenge she faces to heal and do no harm.

“You don’t understand this white man’s world […] You believe that some […] can respect and love us. How mistaken you are!”

Throughout Tituba’s interactions with John Indian, she is appalled by his affected behavior, which he justifies each time as necessary to stay alive in the white man’s world. He criticizes her for helping the Parris family, and her doing so leads to the accusations against her. The irony is that his allegedly feigned caricature of the black slave has taken on the characteristic of hatred—and it is this trait that allows him to survive relatively unscathed. For Condé, Tituba, and Hester, it is a man’s world, in which women are exploited and suppressed, regardless of color.

“You’re a Negress, Tituba! You can only do evil. You are evil itself.”

The words of the child Betsey reflect that although Tituba is her caregiver, Betsey is influenced by her Puritan family and society to believe Tituba to be a dangerous enemy. Her viewpoint serves as a reminder from the author, whose intent is to imply that the children of Puritan America still have much to learn in terms of prejudice.

“‘There he is! I can see him […] his eyes like balls of fire […] Look at him!’ […] You would have expected the crowd of adults not to take her seriously. Instead, the crowd ran in all directions, falling on their knees and reciting psalms and prayers.”

This quote exemplifies two crucial elements: the hysteria characteristic of the Salem witch trials, and the ridiculous. It is comical despite the consequences of the scene—thereby suggesting the metafictional parody that the reader is witnessing through Tituba. The deceased Tituba is not dead. Like Chaucer the Pilgrim in The Canterbury Tales, who completes the pilgrimage and returns to tell the truth through mockery of the liars, Tituba returns to reveal the ignorance of those she encountered in Salem.

“Like four great birds of prey the men surged into my room wearing black hoods with holes for their eyes.”

The birds-of-prey reference is repeated four times in the text, three of them in a single chapter describing the events of the questioning, rape and beating, and arrest of Tituba. The poetic paralleling suggests the metanarrative presence of the author, who uses a somewhat mocking image of these men who imagine themselves to be of great power but who wear hoods to rape Tituba with a stick. A similar description appears in the Epilogue, in which the omniscient Tituba offers the prediction of America as the cruel land where white men will be covering their faces to torture people of color.

“You’re not worth the rope to hang you with!”

Samuel Parris shouts this line to Tituba. It is emblematic of the society that Condé asserts unjustly treated Tituba. The implication is that the life of a black woman is too insignificant to honor her history. As Conde repeats in the Afterword, Tituba was forgotten because of her race and gender.

“Why in this society does one give the function of witch an evil connotation? The witch, if we must use that word, rights wrongs, helps, consoles, heals…”

Another recurring debate throughout the text is the white, Puritan concept of a witch versus the African concept of a spiritual healer. The misunderstanding offers another glimpse into the parodic element woven into the text, in the image of a healer hanging from a noose as the executioner declares himself a child of God.

“But we know nothing about Africa anymore and it no longer has meaning for us.”

Another instance of Condé speaking through Tituba and Tituba speaking through Condé, this line addresses the commentary on the patriarchal, European society that erased the African cultures in the African Diaspora. Just as Tituba knows nothing about Africa anymore, Tituba and Condé know nothing about Tituba from American historical accounts.

“Life is too kind to men, regardless of the color of their skin.”

The highlight of parody and metafiction in the text is the insertion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne to discuss feminism with Tituba. Hester’s line reflects precisely what Condé intends in the novel—to emphasize the discrimination of women more so than the discrimination of people of color. Hester, as a white woman subject to punishment for adultery, represents the struggles of women in a patriarchal and Puritan society that can use religion to justify stoning, hanging, exploitation, and oppression—whereas John Indian, as a black man, escapes the turmoil.

“Tituba, a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing hoodoo.”

The phrase is repeated several times, not only by Tituba, but by the author, who has inserted herself by way of a Foreword and Afterword that address the reader. As Tituba was largely ignored in the documenting of the Salem witch trials, the single line about her is symbolic of the loss of culture caused by the African Diaspora and the creative search for identity and origin. It brings the past into the present question of whether colonial, misogynist, and racist ideologies linger in our understanding of modern society.

“As early as the end of the seventeenth century […] judgments would be made, rehabilitating the victims, restoring their honor […] 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.”

Both this quotation and the one that follows display an intentional intermingling of author and narrator. More than a simple omniscient narrator, the Tituba who is speaking is aware of the volumes to be written, the lack of a biography for Tituba, and the fate of the other victims.   

“My sweet, crooked, misshapen lover!”

Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo is the lover Tituba reluctantly leaves when he grants her freedom and passage back to Barbados. The line speaks to Tituba’s ability to embrace love and affection, regardless of appearance. Her relationship Benjamin marks a turning point in Tituba’s understanding of equality, as she notes the difference between the equality she experiences with Benjamin and its absence with John Indian

“I can look for my story among those witches of Salem, but it isn’t there.”

These words appear twice—once in the Foreword by activist, scholar, and writer Angela Y. Davis and later as Tituba recalls her fear of being lost and forgotten. They establish the symbiotic union of author and narrator, who collaborate to tell the epic tale of Tituba’s journey to restore her presence in a history that intentionally ignored her. It is a journey to reclaim the presence of the oppressed and bring light to how little ideologies have changed since the time of the Puritans.

“A few lines in the many volumes written on the Salem witch trials. Why was I going to be ignored? This question too had crossed my mind. Is it because nobody cares about a Negress and her trials and tribulations? Is that why?”

Like the previous quotation, this direct address to the reader reminds us that we are reading a postmodern, epic tale—a parody to highlight the wickedness of this episode in American history.

“My real story starts where this one leaves off and it has no end.” 

These are the lines of a fictional character aware of the immortality of her tale being told and retold. It is the moment of a tale being aware of itself as a tale, and in the awareness of that fictional element, the fictional character gains authenticity. The notion of metafiction, associated with postmodernism, connects the 17th-century Tituba to the postmodern reader. With those words, Tituba defines not only her fictional and historical characters, but also her narrative presence, as she leaves the American reader to answer a question about whether white, patriarchal society’s suppression of the stories women and people of color is ongoing.

“A vast, cruel land where the spirits only beget evil! Soon they will be covering their faces with hoods, the better to torture us. They will lock up our children behind the heavy gates of the ghettos. They will deny us our rights and blood will beget blood.”

The resurrected spirit of Tituba speaks these words about America. She can see the future and past, and the statement offers a bridge for the reader to cross—to reconnect the dots from the African Diaspora to the civil rights abuses of the present day.

“Such is the intentional or unintentional racism of our historians that we shall never know […] I myself have given her an ending of my own choosing.”

These are the words of Mary Condé to the reader. The Historical Note, as the Foreword and Afterword, appear in the American edition of the novel’s English-language translation. It serves as a call to current-day writers and historians to ask whether more stories must be written to correct what has been claimed as history.