By: Dwana Pinchock

What would you like our Library members to know about you?

After I graduated from college, I worked for a period of time as a civil rights investigator on gender and race discrimination. Then I decided to go to law school, and I graduated from the University of Detroit School of Law. I then practiced law for 34 years, all of it in Harrisburg, and was able to retire in my early sixties.

I have always been interested in writing. Before I became an attorney, I had started a novel, but it just didn’t have what it needed in order to make it out into the wild. It spent 34 years in one of my dresser drawers. That was back in the day when the only way to create something in writing was by using a typewriter.

After I retired, I worked on that novel again, but still, it didn’t make the cut. I was still a member of the Dauphin County Bar Association, and once a month, they would have a lunch where lawyers earn continuing legal education. For fun, the director of the Bar Association booked a law professor who had done a great deal of research on the Salem witch trials to give a talk.

He focused on stuff particularly interesting to lawyers, like due process of law or the lack of it, and how evidence was permitted that would never be permitted in a court of law today. He discussed the things that led to the convictions and executions of 19 people. That flipped the switch for me. I thought, now there’s a story that suits my background a bit but also is really interesting. I had never visited Salem before, so it gave me an opportunity to do some travel and investigation, and that’s how I got the idea to write Tituba.

What was it like for you to delve into a situation where these women were villainized in this way?

Well, there were two challenges. I was writing from the point of view of the opposite gender and also of an enslaved person. That was daunting, but it appealed to me. One of the reasons it appealed to me was that when Arthur Miller presented Tituba in The Crucible, she was presented as a flat character with no substance.

Because of my civil rights background, and with the opportunity to write a story for a predominantly white audience, it was a chance for me to characterize an enslaved person as a human being. This presented a challenge to me, and I just jumped in.

What was it like for you to tell her story to this particular audience?

It’s complicated. Fifty years ago, when I was a civil rights investigator for the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, it was kind of iffy to be a white guy doing that kind of work and letting his white friends know he was doing it.

How did you know how to present her story when you have an entirely different experience moving through the world? You’re free, and male, and you’re not of African descent, while Tituba was an enslaved woman of color.

My goal was to describe a human being with agency. When the book starts, she has no agency. She is not viewed with any humanity, because she’s an enslaved person. In this current era, it was a perfect opportunity for me to not describe “the slave experience,” but to describe the way a human being who lives without agency finds agency.

When I introduced magic into the story, ironically, that was the vehicle I used to create a story that had a message. The message that everybody has the same feelings. I picked out things that I firmly believe are shared by both genders, and people of all colors, and all cultures, and made that the unifying factor of the story.

Did you get any pushback on your choice of subject matter?

Never. In fact, one of the most gratifying things to me was that I made the acquaintance of a man named Rick Murphy who was being interviewed on an African American talk radio program.

I emailed Rick and talked to him about my view that black history is really American history. He told me that he was involved with the Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Association, and they had a book award contest every year. He encouraged me to submit my book, and I thought, what are my chances? Well, I won in the Historical section. That was gratifying. It was like a stamp of approval. I had ventured into some pretty tricky waters, and I passed.

Had I not worked at the Human Relations Commission, I might not have learned the things that ultimately found a voice in my book; things that informed the way I ran my law practice.

Can you tell us a little bit about what libraries mean to you?

My entire professional career as a lawyer and as a writer depends upon the acquisition of information. The fact that we have free libraries available has been the cornerstone of everything that I’ve done in my life. When I was practicing law, I hardly had time to read for pleasure.

Upon retiring, I don’t know how many books I’ve taken out of the library, but it’s an enormous number of books. That led me to recognize how much I appreciate the library, and I became a volunteer. I come in once a week for an hour. It’s meaningful to me because, as I tell my friends, I get to hang out with people who like to learn.

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Sip and Speak:

Sip and Speak will be on Thursday, January 16 at the East Shore Area Library from 3:00-4:30 pm. Join us for an introspective monthly book club at East Shore Area Library! Sip some tea with us and talk about life, especially how we persevere, find hope, and define ourselves through it all. This is a non-fiction book club focusing on titles about pain, loss, love, strength, and triumph.  Join us for discussion and light refreshments! Register today for our January meeting at https://dcls.libcal.com/event/13313252.