SOURCE: "Giving Voice to Tituba: The Death of the Author?," in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 4, Autumn, 1993, pp. 751-56.

Mudimbé-Boyi is an educator, critic, and editor who specializes in African and Caribbean literature. In the following essay, she discusses the themes of gender relationships and the search for identity in Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.

The story of the witches of Salem has been recounted in different ways by different authors: Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, Ann Petry's Tituba of Salem Village, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, and a 1982 film called Three Sovereigns for Sarah starring Vanessa Redgrave. If Tituba is mentioned at all, there is little room for her in the narratives; and as she states in recounting her story in Maryse Condé's novel Moi, Tituba, sorcière … Noire de Salem (Eng. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem), she has been reduced to...