Publishers Weekly Conde is one of the most prolific writers of the Caribbean and perhaps the most powerful woman's voice in contemporary literature of the Americas. Read more -New York Times Book Review At once playful and searing, Conde's work critiques ostensibly white, male versions of history and literature by appropriating them.
Conde's gift for storytelling and her unswerving focus on her characters, combined with her mordant sense of humor. In less sure hands, this short, powerful novel, which won France's Grand Prix Litteraire de la Femme in 1986, might well have become merely an extended denunciation of a perverted and evil society. This book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agencY. 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. Maryse Conde brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional childhood, adolescence, and old age. 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. Series: CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French (Paperback). (Sept.Description for I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem Paperback. At once playful and searing, Conde's work critiques ostensibly white, male versions of history and literature by appropriating them. Eventually reprieved, Tituba is bought by a Jew, himself persecuted, who frees her and gives her passage to Barbados. Charged with witchcraft when she heals Parris's wife and daughters, she shares a jail cell with Hester Prynne, who helps her plan her testimony before the Salem judges. Conceived when an English sailor rapes an Ashanti captive on the slave ship Christ the King, Tituba grows up in Barbados but follows her beloved, John Indian, into servitude in America when he is sold to minister Samuel Parris. Her pointedly political story indicts the Puritans' racism and hypocrisy and their contemporary manifestations. Revising the legend of a slave woman accused of practicing witchcraft and imprisoned in Salem, Mass., in 1692, Conde freely imagines Tituba's childhood and old age, endows her with what Davis calls a contemporary social consciousness, and allows her to narrate the tale. The author of the highly recommended intergenerational saga Tree of Life (Fiction Forecasts, June 29) moves from her native Guadeloupe to colonial New England in this potent novel.
0 kommentar(er)
