The Art of Hybridity: Maryse Condé’s Tituba

This paper analyses Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem as a narrative of identity shaped by nomadism, exile, and intercultural encounters. I argue that Tituba’s constant movement challenges the rigid boundaries imposed by traditional forms of identification. This movement is not limited to space, since the narrative is cyclical and contrapuntal. Therefore, the psychological, spatial, and temporal wanderings of Tituba reveal a sense of being that is hybrid, in Bakhtinian terms. She transcends socially prescribed identities based on static conceptualizations of time, place, community, race, gender, and language. Tituba is what Bakhtin calls, “an act of becoming.” She affirms a dialogic and ever-changing sense of self, which is free from external and monologic narratives of identification.