I TITUBA BLACK WITCH OF SALEM

In less sure hands, this short, powerful novel, which won Frances Grand Prix Littraire de la Femme in 1986, might well have become merely an extended denunciation of a perverted and evil society. What makes it larger and richer are Ms. Conds gift for storytelling and her unswerving focus on her characters, combined with her mordant sense of humor." New York Times Book Review "At once playful and searing, Conds work critiques ostensibly white, male versions of history and literature by appropriating them." Publishers Weekly "Cond is one of the most prolific writers of the Caribbean and perhaps the most powerful womans 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 Conds imaginative subversion of historical records forms a critique of contemporary American society and its ingrained racism and sexism that is as discomfiting as Arthur Millers critique, based on the same historical material, of McCarthyism and 1950s America in his play The Crucible." Boston Sunday Globe

Originally from Guadeloupe, Maryse Cond 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 Conds novels.