“Out of them all, you’ll be the only one to survive:” Hybrid “I”, Hybrid Text in I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

Abstract

This article tackles the dogmatic riddle put forth in the challenging and assertive title I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. The interchangeability of the self-assured “I” and the oft-voiceless “Black” distorts the authority of normative discourses and topples the complacent portrayals of the silenced Black and the domineering White. The blurring of demarcating lines between visible/invisible, self/Other, and Black/White marks the hybridized identity that Tituba discloses. The Other, therefore, emerges as a locus around which the entanglement of subjugation and empowerment, subjection and abjection is woven. Indeed, this paper follows the process of constructing and re-constructing Tituba’s identity while concomitantly relocating it in the complex realm of hybridity. In consolidating a wide array of voices into a single and personal narrative, the novel reveals an ambivalent “I” that subtly wavers between self-assertion and erasure as the ex-slave is found enmeshed in the intricate web of racial and gendered cultures. The hybridity of Tituba(s)’ identity is to be tackled not only through her ability to defy heteroglossia and create her own voice, transcending the fixity and artificiality of monologic accounts but also through the hybridized text itself.