The Trans-Atlantic Slave Experience in Prince Justice’s Tutuoba: Salem’s Black Shango Slave Queen

Abstract

This article employs Linda Hutcheon’s notion of historiographic metafiction (1988. A poetics of postmodernism: History, theory and fiction. New York: Routledge) as a theoretical construct to interrogate and destabilize the official history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Salem Witch Trials (1692–1693) in Prince Justice’s Tutuoba: Salem’s Black Shango Slave Queen (2007. London: AU Media). Justice reconceptualizes the Salem Witch Trials as an offshoot of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, making gendered discourses on slavery, racism, identity, justice, socio-economic realities and the African diaspora relevant to the twenty-first century reader. A framework of historiographic metafiction demonstrates how Justice seeks to reconstruct the experiences of the eponymous character, subvert traditional historical viewpoints and install plausible alternative narrative accounts, which connect the Salem Witch Trials to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The conscious effort of Justice to interrogate official historical and legal documents directs attention to the contemporary discourses and interdisciplinary links between literature and subject areas such as history and law, as well as cultural and diasporic studies.