>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Welcome, everyone.
I hope you have had an
inspiring and fun day
at the 15th National Book Festival.
I am Jo Ann Jenkins, the CEO of
AARP which is one of the sponsors
of the Fiction Pavilion this year.
If you haven't already done so,
please take a moment to stop
by the AARP exhibit today.
You can't miss us.
We're the place with
the big A downstairs
at the Book Sale Shop
and the signing lines.
This is such a great
opportunity for you to learn more
about the amazing work
that we do at AARP
in communities all
across this country.
And we, like -- what
we like to say at AARP,
"If you don't think
loving books when you think
about AARP then you don't know art."
So we're excited.
One of the pleasures I have today is
to introduce a great
author, Lalita Tademy.
I find Lalita's writings
particularly intriguing
because of the locations
and the time sets
of her stories mirror the
south that I grew up in.
And she is an amazing
storyteller and I'm looking forward
to hearing all about her most recent
book, Citizens Creek, A Novel .
Ladies and gentlemen, please join
me in welcoming Lalita Tademy back
to the National Book Festival.
[ Applause ]
>> Lalita Tademy: Thank you, Jo Ann.
So I thought that I would,
I'd start with a reading
and the reading is
from Citizens Creek .
This is my third historical novel.
This is a story of
basically two people.
It is a story of Cow Tom
and his granddaughter Rose.
They lived in the 1800s
and early 1900s.
I write multigenerational sagas.
Cow Tom started out as the slave
of an American Indian
chief of the Creek tribe.
He himself, bought -- he bought
himself free before the Civil War
and by the end of the Civil
War, he had risen in the tribe
so that he was himself the
first black Creek Indian chief.
And the second part of the book
is about his daughter, Rose.
So I'm going to read you a
passage and the passage is really
around the birth of Rose.
And Rose was born one of twins.
And her male twin did not
survive but she did and they were
so looking forward to having
a boy to continue the line
and there was great
disappointment that it was only Rose
that survived and the
male child died.
And Cow Tom's wife is named Amy,
just so you know who she is.
Cow Tom carried the white muslin
bundle through the muddied pasture
to a pinch of land he reckoned
forevermore would be the
family graveyard.
Amy followed at his heel.
He was oblivious to the ribbed
globes turning deep orange
on the ground, pumpkin time,
his thoughts pulled
too tight around loss.
Unlike so many others in the
tribe, black or red, Cow Tom had
yet to bury one of his
own here on this stretch
of soil along the Canadian River,
and that it should be thus,
not of starvation, or epidemic,
or someone's natural time,
but before life had even
had a chance to blossom,
weighted him like an anvil.
The tiny body in his arms was
light, shockingly light, a still,
transient thing and he tried not
to imagine what could have been.
Edmound. Amy's step was
close behind his own.
She slid in the mud once, a slippery
footfall, but righted herself
without going down, and
carried forward without comment.
His arms were full.
He couldn't help her.
"The girl still lives,"
Cow Tom reminded.
Amy didn't answer, yet
trudged along after.
The family waited on them at the
clearing, standing in a circle
around the hole Cow Tom
dug earlier that morning.
Edmound's father, Faithful,
wore his cloth meeting jacket,
but atop his head, slightly askew,
was the ceremonial red turban,
the soft cotton soiled and
fraying along the edges,
but majestic nonetheless,
and draped around his neck
on a leather strip,
his shell necklace.
Faithful did his best to rise
to the formality of the occasion
but even standing still,
he swayed in place,
his head seemingly too heavy for
his body, his red eyes blinking
against the light, the reek of
alcohol escaping from his pores.
He carried his old
hunting rifle, testing --
resting stock down
barrel up at his shoulder
as a military man would on parade.
Next to him stood Sarah, filled out
and more matronly than in those days
so long ago in the Monmouth.
Concern deep etched her face like
the carvings on Faithful's shell
and she rushed over to throw
her arms around Amy's shoulders
and lead her into the
bosom of their circle.
Amy seemed to take comfort.
Sarah didn't let go of her grasp
and Amy didn't drop Sarah's hand
as she took her place
by the graveside.
Cow Tom knew how Amy would
want the ceremony to transpire,
full of her own distinct mix
of ritual Creek and African.
He could give her this.
He took the lead, placing
the form in the hole,
laying strips of elm bark over
the small body until the white
of the cotton muslin was
almost lost from view,
stealing looks at Amy the while.
Still, she seemed not ready, her
face rock hard which he expected,
but her spirit too far from
his reach, which he did not.
After, he motioned to Amy and
Faithful, and they each threw
in their handful of dirt,
the final handshake.
The rest of the family members
followed, from youngest barely able
to form a credible fistful of dirt
to oldest, Bella, who wept silently,
even after her return to Amy's side.
When they'd all had their turn, he
finished the task, shoveling heaps
of earth as cover, and packing
the soil down with his hands,
careful not to stomp on any of
the new dirt around the gravesite.
Amy would accuse him of
bringing sickness back
to their own house, if
he had not done such.
He found three smooth stones,
each the size of a winter squash
and placed the markers carefully
at the top of the bulging mound,
glancing over to Amy's bowed
head the while for a sign.
Cow Tom had his musket
loaded and ready
to fire, and Faithful his rifle.
The boy would go with
the proper send-off.
Cow Tom fired the first shot in
the air to the north and Faithful,
though shaky, fired
the second, west.
Cow Tom rammed the next
load in and shot south.
Faithful shot east.
"Old Turtle watches after
the boy now," Cow Tom said.
He sought to give Amy a vision,
his vision to make
the letting go easier.
They'd made their start
under Old Turtle's eye.
Cow Tom looked again
to Amy, hopeful.
Amy met his gaze, the
struggle plain.
He could do no more.
She brought her hands
together slowly, palm to palm.
At first, Cow Tom feared
she sought to rid them
of the red, clinging soil.
But she repeated the motion,
again, and then again,
until with great relief,
he knew it to be clapping.
Solemn, she picked up the pace and
changed the tempo, lifting her head.
With considerable effort,
she smiled.
A bit of a disquieting smile to be
sure, laced with stiff and grimace,
but born of her clear
attempt to appear gay,
to conform to her abiding belief in
the public banishment of sadness.
She stared him down as she
continued her constant beat
until he too clapped along with
her, until he too forced a smile
where nothing but hollow
lived beneath.
When at last she stopped
the strange percussion,
he knew it time to
build the shelter.
With stout branches for poles
and a canopy of elm bark,
he built a little cover over the
mound to keep the rain from soaking
down in the new dirt, protection
until the soul had time to depart.
They went back to the tepee
then, and Amy scattered some
of her medicine around, both
inside and out, in the far corners,
along the seams of the cowhide,
low talking under her breath.
She killed the old fire, still
usable, scattering log and ash
in every direction before
building another, all new
and only then did she concentrate
on Malinda and the baby.
"No," Malinda said,
pushing the baby away.
"She seeks you," Amy said and
placed the baby girl once more
in her mother's arms.
"No, I want the boy."
The girl baby whimpered,
searching, prelude to a cry.
Amy secured the child and
positioned her at Malinda's nipple.
"The girl is here, not the boy.
No use disrespecting
facts," said Amy.
Her voice had grown stern,
the voice of Cow Tom's memory
after Old Turtle's funeral
when he took to his bed
and Amy coaxed him
from his dark place.
"You will mother her," said Amy.
Now the mother was weary
and unconnected to the girl
at her breast and Amy, who worked
with them both, encouraging the baby
to suckle and the mother to nourish.
Cow Tom already intruded in
this women's business more
than natural, made his decision.
He never should have allowed the
foolishness of the boy's name.
They'd gone too far afield
of themselves in Edmound.
The girl would have a simpler
name, a grounded moniker,
neither too Indian nor too white.
The boy had let go
his grasp of the world
but the girl still
battled for her place.
Cow Tom appreciated such a spirit.
A flower came to his
mind, a special flower,
able to defend itself,
a flower thorned.
"Rose," he proclaimed to
the startled household.
"Her name is Rose."
[ Applause ]
So I -- I didn't come
to writing easy.
I came late and I came hard.
I had an entire career
before I turned to writing
and I never imagined that I would
write one book, let alone three.
In the mid-1990s, I left
the corporate career behind
to find myself in as you can
maybe some of you can imagine.
My mother was tremendously
disappointed
in this notion of finding yourself.
She pretty much said, "You'd
better find yourself a new job."
[Laughter] But I was so
interested in our genealogy,
the genealogy of my family,
the genealogy of those
that came before us.
I was so interested in the
differences between what I knew
to be our family's
stories and the story
that is really the mainstream
narrative of the south,
Gone with the Wind which didn't
really reflect any of those people
that I knew and the
strength that they had.
And I wanted to -- I wanted
to discover my ancestors
in a different way.
And I had no intentions
of writing about them.
I just wanted to find them.
And I went on a search.
I went on a search,
a genealogy search.
I knew my great grandmother's name
and I had some family
stories of her, Emily.
I knew my great-great
grandmother's name, Philomene,
even though I didn't really
have very many stories of her
but I wanted to find one
more great out there.
And so I began this
search that took 18 months.
This is after I had
quit a corporate job
and I had not been
working for 18 months.
And I was paying a professional
genealogist this entire time to try
to find these women in my family.
And I was paying her by the hour.
At the very time that I was going
to give up and I called in and said,
"I have to, I have to -- I can
no longer afford to pay you."
She said, "No, no, no, no.
We're so close.
We're so close.
I will do this pro bono for you."
That's all she had to say.
She didn't need to say anything
else [laughter] but she said,
"And not only will I do
this pro bono for you
because I've never been able to
trace a slave family back as far
as we have been able to go and we
are so very close, I will do this
and I will get my mother
to help me."
Again, I was trapped on pro bono and
the fact that her mother was going
to help was irrelevant until I found
out her mother was the president
of the American Genealogy
Society [laughter].
And a couple of weeks later, I was
holding in my hand, a bill of sale
of my great-great-great-great
grandmother,
who had been sold in 1850 for $800.
And that was such an astounding,
that was such an astounding
discovery that I knew
that I wanted to write about it.
I wanted to write about the stories
of these amazing women
that had come before.
So I write historical fiction
and I'm often asked
why historical fiction?
Why don't you write
about something current?
Why don't you write
a contemporary story?
And the official nomenclature
is historical fiction
but I prefer to call it faction.
It's a bit of fact and it's a bit
of fiction that makes the story
that I think is compelling and
allows a reader access in ways
that they wouldn't normally have.
And the stories that I am drawn
to are the stories that are
about those things that I
did not know, I did not know.
And so, knowing that it takes me
three to four years to write a book,
it has to be something
complex, and interesting,
and surprising all the way through,
in order to hold my interest
so that I can hopefully
hold the reader's interest.
So I write historical
fiction because history is
so very often rewritten
by the victor.
That's the only story that you hear.
And southern history is
rewritten by the entitled.
So I wanted to write and to
give voice to the voiceless.
I wanted to give voice to
those people who are trying
to live everyday lives
within a certain context.
I seem to be stuck
in slavery somehow.
There's always some
-- a reference to it.
Even when I start later on, and
it's after the Civil War, sometimes,
there's something that goes back.
But I think this is a history of a
people and I think it's a history
that we can't afford
to leave behind.
And I think we need to continue
to understand how this country was
built, how this country was made
and we're still wrestling with
all of these problems today.
And until we recognize them, I
think we will continue to wrestle.
So the things that I didn't know
that I didn't know before I started
writing books, in my first book,
Cane River , I was only
glancingly aware of in Louisiana,
of a unique place called Cane River,
where whites' slaves and free people
of color were each their own
distinct categories of people.
And they co-existed in
ways that were peculiar,
and surprising, and a bit odd.
I didn't realize how much
slaves were the economic engine
of the south.
I thought it was more about land.
It was really the value was in
the slaves that worked the land.
I didn't realize how many
side families there were
that I was descended from and
these are intact side families.
These were white men who
had their own white families
but they also had a side family
with a black woman and most
of the time, that was coerced.
But they were families
that grew up together
in a very strong family unit.
And so I explored that in my
first book, Cane River .
In Red River which was my second
book, I didn't really realize --
just because I had never
been taught this in school,
that black men could vote
and not only could vote
but could hold office.
And they did in those 10 years
after the Civil War ended
and during reconstruction.
And there was an incident there
in the small town where both
of my parents grew up, Colfax,
that was called the Colfax Riot.
And this was the black men of the
town trying to defend their slate
of candidates that were to
come in -- that they voted in,
and the white men who had
previously ruled, refused to vacate.
They drove the black men who were
protesting into the courthouse,
set fire to the courthouse,
shot them when they came out.
This was a story according to
my aunt, who told me only this.
She said, "Three of
your grandfathers --
three of your great grandfathers
were in that courthouse.
Some got out and some didn't."
And so it became a great
puzzle piece to try
to figure out what that story was.
And so I wrote that
story for Red River .
For Citizens Creek ,
there was such a long list
of the things that I did not know.
I did not know, for example, that
American Indians owned slaves.
Starting out for this
particular branch of the family,
starting out in Alabama,
and when the removal
by the U.S. government came in
the 1830s, the slaves were removed
because the U.S. government wanted
that land and they were moved
into Indian territory,
the Indians were allowed
to take their possessions with
them and that include their slaves.
And so, along the Trail of Tears,
there were not only the American
Indians but their slaves as well.
I didn't realize how
complicated the inter-
and intra-tribal politics
were within the tribes,
how the government used one
tribe to round up another tribe
and drive them along the
removal into Indian territory.
I didn't realize that black men
in the tribes sometimes had a very
unique position, a very unique
and leveraged position actually.
In some of these tribes,
they did not speak English.
And in many cases, the U.S.
government didn't speak the dialect
of the tribe.
And many of these black men who
had been owned by both black
and American Indian, spoke both
and they became the interpreters.
And they helped to negotiate the
treaties between these two factions.
So that was as translators
and interpreters
and that was Cow Tom's
way of becoming free,
buying his family free, and
then rising to a position
where he was politically
a tribal chief himself.
I also didn't realize that
the largest land distribution
that the country, this
country has known was freed men
of American Indian tribes
who were given 160 acres.
Now we all heard about 40 acres
and a mule that never came --
that never came to pass
after the Civil War.
There was talk.
It never happened.
What did happen was that freed
men who were considered citizens
of the Creek tribe and the
Cherokee tribe, many of the tribes,
were actually given 160 acres, man,
woman and child so
that they owned land.
They were very quickly
cheated out of that land
but the land distribution
did take place.
So all of these things were events
that I just did not know even
occurred in history and I wanted
to write about them but I
wanted to write about them
in a very personal way within
the context of their families
and how they brought
their families along.
Citizens Creek is
actually based on a real man.
This is not made up.
There really was an African
Creek chief named Cow Tom
which was shocking to me.
And his granddaughter took on
the mantle of his independence
and she became a rancher and owned
ranchland in Oklahoma herself.
This is not my family but
it's somebody's family.
So the stories that I'm drawn to
are stories that we don't learn
in school and at least, I didn't
learn about them in school
and I've talked to very few people
who know about these little,
little cubbyholes in history.
I am far more interested
in the resilience of people
and the construction of
families and how we use families
to withstand the battering of
history than I am facts or dates
which is why I am, again,
particularly drawn to faction.
I think that you can get at
truth sometimes far more easily
through fiction than you can
through something that you footnote
and you have to document
three different ways.
The characters that I'm drawn
to and the stories that I want
to tell always seem to be of
people that are victimized
but they are never victims.
They figure their way through and
they figure their way through,
not only for themselves, but
for their families as well.
They are dedicated to
bringing their children along.
They make difficult choices.
They make choices about
whether their children should be
acculturated or whether
they want them to stay
within a certain culture.
And in each case, the intent is that
the next generation will have more
than the generation
that came before.
And that's consistent and
it's based in reality.
So I am so thrilled
to be able to come
and talk about Citizens Creek .
I'm so thrilled that there was,
that there was a family that rose
from nothing really, from
slavery times in the 1800s
to producing a child
in the early 1900s
who became the largest black
oil broker in the country.
And this was through a series of
choices that each generation made.
And that's also of great
interest to me as the choices
that on generation makes having so
much impact on the next generation,
and the generation after that,
and the generation after that.
Even if those people
in that generation don't realize
what those connections are,
they are connected.
So I would love to answer any
questions that anybody has
and hopefully there is one in
the audience here somewhere.
>> Hello.
>> Lalita Tademy: Hi.
>> I wanted to ask
about your experience.
You said you came to writing
late and you came at it hard.
Tell me about your experience as
an author that had some experience
and what the advantages are to
being that kind of an author.
>> Lalita Tademy: The
major advantage to coming
to writing late is that I made
a living before this [laughter].
So I had a very full career in
the corporate environment before
that allowed me the time and space
I needed to try to develop a craft
to be able to write a novel.
That is a huge advantage.
I was particularly lucky because my
first book was selected by Oprah.
So that relieved a lot of
financial pressure [laughter].
But coming to it late also meant
that I could appreciate what
I knew and what I didn't know.
It meant that I -- when I
would sit down to write,
I knew that I had things to say.
I just wasn't sure
what they were yet
and it gave me more
time to find that out.
So I could spend a lot of time by
myself without going off to a job,
or raising small kids,
or any of that.
And just try to concentrate
on the delivery of the story
that I felt was really important.
Yes.
>> A question to your intriguing
exodus from Corporate America
which is did your mother live
long enough to enjoy your success?
>> Lalita Tademy: Okay, let me
tell you a story [laughter].
So my mother, my mother
was a shut-in.
She had multiple sclerosis
so she was a shut-in
and so we would talk pretty often.
When I -- but my mother also was
very instrumental in getting me
through school and, you
know, not only undergraduate
but MBA and you know, on and on.
And so every success that I had was
a shared success because she felt
that that was her promotion
in that job as well.
It wasn't just mine.
It was hers.
I did not ask her if I could
quit my job [laughter].
I just quit.
And so there was a
betrayal and there was a lot
of pouting for a very long time.
And my mother would call me.
This is after I started to write.
My mother would call and she'd
say, "What are you doing?"
And I'd say, "I'm writing.
I'm right in the middle.
I'm writing."
And I would hear this
just deathly silence
and then a very deep
[sighing sound].
"Okay, fine."
And she'd hang up.
So she was not pulling any punches
about how she felt
about any of this.
So I'm writing and the added
insult was that I was writing
about our family and
our family story.
So I was putting our business
out in the street [laughter]
and I wasn't going --
I wasn't interviewing.
I wasn't going back to work.
I was just working on this
thing and then when she found
out that it was all the way back
to slavery, she was appalled.
She was just absolutely, positively
appalled but I was determined
and I kept at it, and kept
at it, and kept at it.
So at the launch of my
first book, Cane River ,
my brother told me this story
because I was in New York
and my brother was her
caretaker and you know,
he described that they were
watching TV and they were watching
on my launch day, on national TV, me
being interviewed by Bryant Gumbel.
And -- according to my brother, she
kept looking at the TV [laughter]
and you just kind of not quite
able to understand what --
they're asking her questions and
he seems like he's interested?
And she's on there and this is
-- and so she was processing.
She was literally just trying
to process this because to her,
it was just something foolish
that I was doing she
thought I would grow out of.
So, you know, those interviews
last for three, four minutes tops.
And so, you know, I'm off
and the phone rang almost
immediately when I went off the air.
And it was the pastor of her church.
And he said, "Sister Willie Dean,
I just saw your daughter being
interviewed by Bryant Gumbel.
Do you think you could get her to
come down and talk at the church?"
[Laughter] And my mother
said, "That's my child.
She'll do anything
I tell her to do."
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
And after that, my
mother would call.
You know, I came back home.
It was time to start another book.
I would be right in
the middle of writing.
The phone would ring.
I pick up the phone.
And she'd say, "What are you doing?"
And I'd say, "I'm writing."
"Don't let me disturb you.
I'll talk to you later."
[ Laughter and Applause ]
She came around.
[ Applause ]
>> I have two questions for you.
>> Lalita Tademy: All right.
>> I spent time in
Silicon Valley much
like you but during the dot bomb.
And I was curious and so
the first question is,
"Do you think that you'll ever write
about your experiences out there
in Corporate America and in that
very go-go kind of society?"
The second question is, "As
you were doing and going
through the genealogy research,
what ancestor or thing that occurred
in your family did you
identify with as far
as your ability to persevere?"
>> Lalita Tademy: Two
very different questions
and I guarantee you'll all forget
one of them by the time I get going.
But so the first answer
is incredibly easy.
Oh no, I'm not writing about that.
My time in Silicon Valley
was very, very intense.
I was a vice-president at a
Fortune 500 high tech company.
It was go-go-go as you say.
And I don't really want to go
back and relive that interest.
So I'm just not drawn to it.
[Inaudible], there are a lot of
stories there but for some reason,
I'm just really not drawn.
In terms of the experiences of
my characters, there are so many.
In order to write a book and
in order to write a book --
my books all take between 14 and
18 drafts before they're done.
And I live through them
through every single character.
So I try not to make very obvious
villains and very obvious heroes.
Everybody's flawed.
Everybody's just trying
to make it through.
But I think that the -- I think
that in my first book actually
in Cane River , I identify
with one of my ancestors
who could not read or write
and yet she was the one
that accumulated land in Louisiana.
She was the one that
went to the courthouse
and fought to keep that land.
She's the one that put the family
in a position to have something
to build on and I am so -- not
only appreciative I'm in awe
of how she could do
that with so few tools.
So in time that I have the nerve
to even think that my life is hard,
I think back on what she had to
do and what she had to put up with
and this is a piece of cake.
>> Oh, thank you.
>> Hi.
>> Lalita Tademy: Hi.
>> I really liked your plan
about, you know, faction
and the narrative having a
lot more trip in it sometimes
than just a historical like, you
know, narrative in that sense.
And the idea that going through the
narrative can help some experience
in really understanding
of their life.
And I was curious whether you've
had a lot of people reach out to you
to like tell you about
their experience
and how it helped see
the world differently
and really experience it.
And if you do get a lot of that,
like what are the more
interesting responses [inaudible]?
>> Lalita Tademy: I
-- I actually do.
I get a lot of people.
I will tell you, when my --
I'm not surprised anymore but
when my first book came out,
I expected that maybe it would be
appealing to African-Americans.
And what I found as soon as
I went out on the road was
that I had people coming to
me and saying, "You know,
you're relating my
story," and I would look --
and this would be on the
signing line, a book signing line
and I'd look up and
it would be a man.
It would be a Vietnamese woman.
It would be an immigrant.
It would be somebody
outside of that experience
but what they were saying is it's
talking about a marginalized voice
and putting forward with some
clarity what that voice is
and not only what the obstacles
are but what the strategies are
to be able to navigate
that landscape.
And so, that I have had a lot
of people say that they identify
with characters in these
books that I would not expect.
>> Hi.
>> Lalita Tademy: Hi.
>> Don't you have a curiosity
about the lineage of Cow Tom?
I do [laughter].
>> Lalita Tademy: You
mean how he got his name?
>> About his family.
>> Lalita Tademy: About his family.
I do have.
I've had quite a curiosity,
as a matter of fact.
And I went back as far as I
could with that and I had --
so here's one of the things.
When you are writing a
multigenerational novel,
you only have so much
real estate to work with.
And so you can only go back so far
and you have to keep going forward.
So this covers, this covers
almost a hundred years.
So I went back as far as the
naming of Cow Tom on a plantation.
And this was actually a
Creek Indian's plantation
and he was the guy who --
as a boy, he was the guy
that took care of the cattle.
There was another Tom that took care
of the ponies so he became Cow Tom
to differentiate him
from the other Tom.
Beyond that, I don't have fact
and so I moved forward from there
but yes, I'm very interested about
all things Cow Tom [laughter].
>> I was interested to know how you
prepared to write your first book.
Did you go back to school?
Did you take classes or did
you just sit down and write?
>> Lalita Tademy: So please don't
try this at home [laughter], please.
The arrogance that I
came to [inaudible] this,
was it's just amazing to me now.
I really literally sat
down one day and said,
"I think I'll write a book now."
I had prepared, and
prepared, and prepared,
and prepared for a life in business.
For a life of writing, I
did no preparation except
to read everything I
could get my hands on.
And so, I was reading all the time
but I had not taken
a class, nothing.
And what I did is I put myself
in the place of the characters
that I knew were going to be in the
book and I gave each one a diary
and I would write in
the diary every day,
this is what I'm going to do today.
My name is Suzette.
This is what I'm going to do.
I'm going to milk the cow.
I'm, going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
So I wrote these long
involved diaries
and then I started putting all
those characters in rooms together
and having them talk to one
another and then I would throw
in a room together and have
them talk to one another.
And it was just sheer force of
will to try to write a book.
Thank goodness it turned
out all right [laughter].
>> I have a follow-up question
from the previous question.
>> Lalita Tademy: Okay.
>> So how has your writing changed?
Has it gotten easier?
With the third book,
has it gotten, you know,
do you find you're still
facing the same challenges
and what happens when
you do get stumped?
How do you move along?
>> Lalita Tademy: So
maybe this isn't true
for other authors although
I've heard the same thing.
You lose the recipe
in between books.
And unless you're writing
a franchise book,
unless you're writing a sequel and,
you know, you just keep them going.
If you're writing a new data
kind of book, it's just as hard.
It's hard and you can't
figure it out
and I thought the second book would
be so much easier and the third
so much easier than that and it's --
it seems to be the inverse
actually that's happening.
It's getting harder and harder.
I do think that the language
is getting better and better.
So it's a give and take.
And I wish it was easy but
it's not, ever [laughter].
Yes.
>> Most of the history
of African-Americans
in Louisiana is written
and always concentrates
or in southern Louisiana, New
Orleans, Baton Rouge, et cetera.
Thank you so much for
bringing northern Louisiana
to the forefront [laughter].
But also when -- I'm a native
of Louisiana in Shreveport.
I also want to ask you a
question because of Red River .
I want to concentrate on that.
That's a very powerful, very
beautifully written book.
How extensive was your research
on the facts of the Colfax Riot?
>> Lalita Tademy: Yeah, the
research for Red River was
so unbelievably intense
and I actually charted
a three-week period.
You have to do a lot of research --
I had to do a lot of research just
to understand the context
in which this event emerged
but for the three weeks when
it was unfolding and happening
and the immediate aftermath, I
had it plotted down to the hour.
Every single hour for each
one of those three weeks,
what happened here, what happened
there, when did the KKK came in
and surrounded the courthouse.
Each of those I got from
documented fact but so much
about that incident was written
again by the victor that I had
to infer what really happened.
Very, very, very little
documentation other than that hour
by hour compilation
that I put together.
It was -- that was a very tough
place to live for the three weeks,
for the three years it
took me to write that book.
Thank you very much for
your time and attention.
I appreciate it very
much [applause].
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.