So that's just a thing I'll be wearing the day of

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hill+Country+Community+Ministries+Thrift+Store/@30.5605417,-97.84717,16.78z/data=!4m10!1m2!2m1!1sHill+country+thrift+store!3m6!1s0x865b2d7a4113987f:0xb84abc5302f2e2e9!8m2!3d30.5601214!4d-97.8441295!15sChlIaWxsIGNvdW50cnkgdGhyaWZ0IHN0b3JlWhsiGWhpbGwgY291bnRyeSB0aHJpZnQgc3RvcmWSAQx0aHJpZnRfc3RvcmWaASRDaGREU1VoTk1HOW5TMFZKUTBGblNVTXllRmxQVFhablJSQULgAQA!16s%2Fg%2F11j0s1m4j6?entry=ttu

"Many witch hunts were fueled by the accusations of children. The testimony of children, some as young as two years old, was allowed in court. Confused and frightened children were frequently tricked into testifying against their own parents. Other children seemed to fall into fits and accused adults in their community of bewitching them."

One of the afflicted girls, a servant named Mary Warren, at one point admitted to lying about the fits and claimed that the other girls were also lying. The other girls immediately accused her of being a witch and she was arrested. When she stood trial, she changed her story and said that the girls were telling the truth after all. She was released and went back to having fits and making accusations with the other girls.

By the fall of 1692 eighteen men and women had been hanged for practicing witchcraft, four had died in prison, and one man was crushed to death by rocks when he refused to stand trial. Over a hundred more awaited trial in jails around the county. The girls' stories were finally being doubted, as many of the accused had good reputations and were of high standing in the community. On October 8 the governor outlawed testimonies based on visions or dreams and took other actions to end the trials. By the new year most of the accused were re-leased, and the trials ended.

Most people do not believe that the girls in Salem were really being afflicted by witches. Many people believe that the girls pretended to be tormented because they enjoyed being the center of attention in a time when children, especially girls, were expected to be obedient and quiet.

women of African descent-both scholars and artists- to ex. plore the infinite possibilities of our lost history. As Condé offers to Tituba the possibility of filing the silence and voids with voice and presence, we who are Tituba's cultural kin experience the possibilities of our own history. Via an active, constitutive voice, Tituba leaps into history, shattering all the racist and misogynist misconceptions that have defined •the place of black women. Tituba's revenge consists in having persuaded one of her descendants to rewrite her moment in history in her own African oral tradition. And when Tituba takes her place in the history of the Salem witch trials, the recorded history of that era — and indeed the entire history of the colonization process—is revealed to be seriously flawed. Tituba's voice is her own. Maryse Condé even tells us in a prefatory remark that "Tituba and I lived for a year on the closest of terms. During our endless conversations she told me things she had confided to nobody else." But, of course, Condé meticulously researched this historical person, and Tituba's voice is infused with the historically complex and imaginative voice of her creator. It is therefore not rigidly anchored to the social issues of Tituba's times. This historical novel refuses to be confined within the ideological limits of the era during which it unfolds. Tituba engages in recurring meditations on her relationship—as a black woman—to feminism. In this sense, her voice can be viewed as the voice of a suppressed black feminist tradition, one that women of African descent are presently reconstituting— in fiction, criticism, history, and popular culture. Tituba is a powerfully sexual being. She accepts and embraces her sexuality and does not allow the strong sexual attraction she feels for men to dilute her active solidarity with women, black as well as white. Yet, because of her defense of her sexuality, she is reluctant to call herself a feminist. From our contemporary vantage point, feminists of all cultures may find enlightenment in her ambivalence. Tituba is conceived during a violent rape on a slave ship heading toward Barbados. She spends her formative years on the margins of slave society in Barbados, learning the African

art of healing and ancestor reverence and, what is certainly not a contradiction, the spiritual wonderment of sexual love. It is because of her dedication to the ways of her ancestors-and the use of her healing powers to help the women of the family that owns her-that she becomes a target of the Salem witch hunt. Having survived that terrifying ordeal, she returns to Barbados, where she dies as a revolutionary. This is one possible version of Tituba, the black witch of Salem. There are those who dispute her African descent, countering that she was Indian, perhaps hoping to stir up enmity between black and Native American women as we seek to recreate our respective histories. As an African-American femi-nist, I offer my profound gratitude to Maryse Condé for having pursued and developed her vision of Tituba, Caribbean woman of African descent. Should a Native American Tituba be re-created, in scholarly or fictional terms, this would be true to the spirit of Condé's Tituba and her revenge. For, in the final analysis, Tituba's revenge consists in reminding us all that the doors to our suppressed cultural histories are still ajar. If we are courageous enough to peer through the narrow openings, we will discover our fears, our rage, our hopes, and our roots. And sometimes there is magic behind those doors, sparkling clues about the possibilities ahead.

waiting to fall,

I don't know where

but I heard someone recall,

"Alice! Alice! get down from there!!"

you're not a witch!" she cried and called.

She obviously cared,

but then I fall.

The view of my feet,

as I hang and weep,

not able to keep

my life, it goes to sleep.

troli