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Jan. 1--AT A GLANCE
KNOWN FOR | Having her first book, 'Cane River,' selected for Oprah's book club in 2001, sparking debate about mixed-race descendants of slaves and blacks who try to "pass for white."
SECOND ACT | Tademy's new work of historical fiction, "Red River," returns to late 19th-century Louisiana. She traces the little-known Colfax "riot" of 1873, in which freed slaves were slaughtered after exercising their new voting rights.
WASN'T SHE a FORTUNE 500 EXEC? | Yes, Tademy was a VP at Sun Microsystems when she decided to take a break and fell into writing.
Tademy spoke recently by phone with staff writer Ellen Sung in advance of her reading at Quail Ridge Books.
Q -- How do you pronounce your name?
A -- So, the first name is LAH-LEE-TUH. The surname is as if you're saying "academy."
Q -- This surname was very important to your family. What were its origins?
A -- The family story that was passed down and that is re-created in the book is that after the Civil War, the first time that the Census came around where they actually acknowledged that slaves would have a last name, then these relatively newly freed slaves needed to come up with a last name.
Many came up with the name of the plantation they were on, or something that caught their fancy, or something that was a trade, like Smith. But the story goes that Sam Tademy, my great-great-grandfather, actually remembered phoentically what his name from Africa was.
Q -- Have you ever gone back and looked for this name?
A -- I have, and I have not been able to find it. My suspicion is that the name doesn't exist in that exact pronunciation any longer, because I have asked. I may not have asked in the right places, but even as late as November, when I went to Egypt for the first time, I asked everybody there that I saw all the way from Alexandria in the north down to Nubia below Aswan, I was asking had anybody heard of this name.
A lot of the family stories I retold in "Red River" are my closest estimation of what I really believed happened, whether or not I can prove it with documents. But I think that verbal history carries a lot of weight and even if it is not 100 percent accurate, I still think there is almost always a kernel of truth in it.
Q -- Documents aren't always 100 percent accurate either.
A -- That's the shock. For some reason I had it in my head that there were the family stories and then there were the public stories, in newspapers or in deeds, and the public stories were the truth. And I found so many contradictions and things that I could actually prove were misstated in official documentation that I realized that I needed to do a blend of both to arrive at a plausible narrative for these characters' lives.
Q -- Is there a cultural tension about valuing versions of the truth?
A -- Absolutely. And again in "Red River," that was one of the real motivators for me to write this book. History belongs to the victors and almost everything that was written about this incident was written from the point of view, in the context of the times, by white segregationists.
The verbal history was very quiet. People did not want to talk about it, still, generations later. It was a major explosion of violence; it was a precipitator for the official end of Reconstruction as this case got fought all the way up to the Supreme Court.
I really wanted to sort of reclaim that history, now, and tell it from that point of view.
Q -- You told Oprah: "To me, coming from the slave roots has proven to be such a source of extreme strength." That runs counter to what some people's stereotypes might be.
A -- The best example to me is my mother and myself. For my mother, she could never understand why I was sitting down and writing "Cane River." For her, it was looking at a time we had gone beyond and she didn't understand why I would want to or need to put a spotlight on that time.
For me, it was actually an incredible motivator and inspiration that these characters existed and that they were so strong. It made me stronger, because I know I've been given so much more.
Q -- You write in present tense, which gives your prose an immediacy but also a dreamlike quality. Is that the rhythm that you're aiming for?
A -- What I wanted was that immediacy. Really, really strongly, I did not want a reader to be able to be totally passive when they were reading "Red River." I wanted it to be, "Oh my gosh, I'm in this. What's going to happen next? What would I do in this situation?"
The truth is that as I was writing -- I can't remember which draft but it was certainly in the double digits already -- I sort of got stuck. And just to change it in my own head because I'd been working with it for so long, I just decided to change one chapter into the present tense. That freed me up to start writing, and I liked that, so I went back and changed everything to the present tense.
Q -- What's next for you?
A -- Both "Cane River" and "Red River" were huge passions for me. They were stories that I felt I needed to tell and I wanted to tell, from the very small way of "This is my family" to the very large issues of "This is American history." But now I have done that ... and I would like to do something more contemporary and not so steeped in research and maybe even with protagonists that I don't have to honor quite so much.
Q -- Have you started?
A -- I have started at least six times [laughs], and none of them have legs. I'm giving myself a break until the PR for "Red River" has tailed off. So as soon as I'm off of this roller coaster, then I will settle in and I will see if I can find the story that will have legs.
DETAILS
What -- Lalita Tademy.
When -- 7 p.m. Friday.
Where -- Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Ave., Raleigh.
Cost -- Free.
Contact -- 828-1588, www.quailridgebooks.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
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