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A review by burningupasun
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé
4.0
"What is a witch? I noticed that when he said the word, it was marked with disapproval. Why should that be? Why? Isn't the ability to communicate with the invisible world, to keep constant links with the dead, to care for others and heal, a superior gift of nature that inspires respect, admiration, and gratitude? Consequently shouldn't the witch [...] be cherished and revered rather than feared?" [...] "Everyone gives that word a different meaning. Everyone believes he can fashion a witch to his way of thinking so that she will satisfy his ambitions, dreams, and desires."
I picked up this book after finding it on an article called What to Read After Watching Lemonade, and what a good choice it was. Intense, emotional, upsetting, enlightening, and more. I did find some faults in it; at times the writing was a little stilted though I attribute that to it being a translation into English, and there were some minor weird modern incongruities that were a bit jarring (i.e., Hester using the word "feminist" which definitely didn't exist at the time). But overall, this was an amazing read.
This incredibly powerful, emotional book was of course about Tituba, the slave woman from the Salem Witch trials, given a story of her own rather than being relegated to a brief mention in the stories of the (white) people whose names we all learned in history class. It is a story about love and loss and slavery and helplessness and power and magic and good and evil... but it is also very much a story about women. Not just Tituba, though she is of course the main vessel of the story here, but all the varied, complex women that surround her.
Though there are men in this story, it is the women that shine. The women that have the magic in them, the women that are corrupted by the evil of the patriarchal world they live in, the women who ruin themselves for men and then heal through their own inner strength and the help of other women. I couldn't help feeling as I read, that the very natural, healing magic Tituba is shown is meant to represent, on some level, the feminine in general. Her powers are a woman's powers, and as a woman she is subject to the whims of men who try to change women into what they want them to be, to "satisfy his ambitions, dreams, and desires".
"Can't we ever keep our daughters away from men?" Is a concept first muttered by the spirit of Tituba's mother, and then repeated by Tituba herself. And it is Tituba who later also says, "Life is too kind to men, whatever their color."
This was a book that was very much about the plights but also the strength of women. In the afterword at the end, the author herself says: "It seems to me that I stress her condition as a woman more than I stress her condition as a black. John Indian, who was as black as she was, managed to find a way out of the common plight. So the book is more about the discrimination and the ruthlessness against women than against people of color in general."
Though it is the women of this book who suffer most-- as they did in the Salem witch trials, and as Tituba's people and other black women did as slaves-- the book ends in a very spiritual, almost uplifting sort of way, imagining Tituba and other women like her as spirits guiding women and black people to an eventual better future.
I picked up this book after finding it on an article called What to Read After Watching Lemonade, and what a good choice it was. Intense, emotional, upsetting, enlightening, and more. I did find some faults in it; at times the writing was a little stilted though I attribute that to it being a translation into English, and there were some minor weird modern incongruities that were a bit jarring (i.e., Hester using the word "feminist" which definitely didn't exist at the time). But overall, this was an amazing read.
This incredibly powerful, emotional book was of course about Tituba, the slave woman from the Salem Witch trials, given a story of her own rather than being relegated to a brief mention in the stories of the (white) people whose names we all learned in history class. It is a story about love and loss and slavery and helplessness and power and magic and good and evil... but it is also very much a story about women. Not just Tituba, though she is of course the main vessel of the story here, but all the varied, complex women that surround her.
Though there are men in this story, it is the women that shine. The women that have the magic in them, the women that are corrupted by the evil of the patriarchal world they live in, the women who ruin themselves for men and then heal through their own inner strength and the help of other women. I couldn't help feeling as I read, that the very natural, healing magic Tituba is shown is meant to represent, on some level, the feminine in general. Her powers are a woman's powers, and as a woman she is subject to the whims of men who try to change women into what they want them to be, to "satisfy his ambitions, dreams, and desires".
"Can't we ever keep our daughters away from men?" Is a concept first muttered by the spirit of Tituba's mother, and then repeated by Tituba herself. And it is Tituba who later also says, "Life is too kind to men, whatever their color."
This was a book that was very much about the plights but also the strength of women. In the afterword at the end, the author herself says: "It seems to me that I stress her condition as a woman more than I stress her condition as a black. John Indian, who was as black as she was, managed to find a way out of the common plight. So the book is more about the discrimination and the ruthlessness against women than against people of color in general."
Though it is the women of this book who suffer most-- as they did in the Salem witch trials, and as Tituba's people and other black women did as slaves-- the book ends in a very spiritual, almost uplifting sort of way, imagining Tituba and other women like her as spirits guiding women and black people to an eventual better future.