SOURCE: “Before the Stigma Race: Authority and Witchcraft in Ann Petry's Tituba of Salem Village,” in Recovered Writers/Recovered Texts, edited by Dolan Hubbard, University of Tennessee Press, 1997, pp. 105–115.

In the following essay, Harris urges more critical attention to Tituba of Salem Village and explores the ways in which Tituba and other characters adopt and respond to authority.

When we think of the history of African American women's texts, any number of suggestions come to mind about the subjects of their fictional worlds. We think of the slave narratives with their focus on freedom and what it meant to African American women. We think of the religious tradition, either in the spiritual narratives or what was presented in the fiction, and how that tie bound black women to their husbands, children, churches, and God. We think of conjure women, but in the tradition of those presented by Charles...