I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

Maryse Condé Translated by Richard Philcox Foreword by Angela Y. Davis Afterword by Ann Armstrong Scarboro

246 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2

Paper 978-0-8139-2767-1 • $16.50

February 2009

CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature translated from the French

" At once playful and searing, Condé’s work critiques ostensibly white, male versions of history and literature by appropriating them."—Publishers Weekly

"Condé is one of the most prolific writers of the Caribbean and perhaps the most powerful woman’s voice in contemporary literature of the Americas. Her interpretation of the Salem witch trials, recast from her own dreams, is a remarkable work of historical fiction that is a haunting and powerful reminder of the dangers of intolerance of differences."—Choice

"Maryse Condé’s imaginative subversion of historical records forms a critique of contemporary American society and its ingrained racism and sexism that is as discomfiting as Arthur Miller’s critique, based on the same historical material, of McCarthyism and 1950s America in his play 'The Crucible.'"—Boston Sunday Globe

This wild and entertaining novel expands on the true story of the West Indian slave Tituba, who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, arrested in 1692, and forgotten in jail until the general amnesty for witches two years later. Maryse Condé brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional childhood, adolescence, and old age. She turns her into what she calls “a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary ‘Nanny of the maroons,’” who, schooled in the sorcery and magical ritual of obeah, is arrested for healing members of the family that owns her.

CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

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Originally from Guadeloupe, Maryse Condé is Professor Emerita of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University. She is the author of numerous novels, including Heremakhonon, Segu, Crossing the Mangrove, Tales from the Heart, Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat? (winner of the 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction), and The Story of the Cannibal Woman. She now divides her time between New York and Paris. Angela Y. Davis is Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ann Armstrong Scarboro is president of Mosaic Media and producer, with Susan Wilcox of Full Duck Productions, of the series Ethnic Expressions from the Mosaic of the Americas. Richard Philcox is the English-language translator of many of Condé’s novels.