African American Authors

Writing “Fact-tion” with Lalita Tademy

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment
Lalita Tademy
Lalita Tademy

I was with my tribe last weekend, among the many DC booklovers at the 15th annual National Book Festival on Saturday, September 5th. This year I went not only as a booklover, but as an author. My novel PROVENANCE, comes out in October, and I wanted to see how the pros engaged with their readers. One of the sessions I attend was with author Lalita Tademy where she read from her latest novel, CITIZENS CREEK. Tademy is a favorite author of mine for many reasons—I love her writing, we are both happy refugees from the corporate world, we both came to writing later in life and, after achieving success in one career, we had to learn a completely new profession—writing—on the job.

Another important similarity, that I can now give name to after hearing Tademy speak, is that we both write “fact-ion”—a term Tademy explained as fiction based on fact. She explained that when something piques her interest, as did her ancestral past for her novels CANE RIVER and RED RIVER, she deeply researches her subjects and weaves the facts of people, places and time into a compelling story. She has done that again for CITIZENS CREEK, an epic story of the slave, Cow Tom, who became the black chief of the Creek Indian Nation.

While Tademy’s oeuvre deals with aspects of the history of slavery in 19th century America, my novel, PROVENANCE, moves that history forward to aspects of the African-American struggle for freedom in the 20th century. Like Tademy, I use historical figures, places and facts to tell the story of fictional characters who, because of their light-colored skin, believed they could escaped the tyranny of racial discrimination only to find that their freedom was not truly free.

In response to a question about the topic of her work, Tademy said her writing enables her to tell the stories of people whose lives are for the most part unexplored in American history. Through PROVENANCE, I hope to do the same thing, share unique American “fact-ion” that illuminates a cultural aspect of history that rarely reaches an audience.

Is Passing a Thing of the Past or Has It Just Evolved?

~ Donna Drew Sawyer ~ Leave a comment

A Chosen Exile Cover A recent story on NPR’s All Things Considered about a new non-fiction book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America, by author Allyson Hobbs, discussed the practice of light-skinned blacks passing for white to circumvent entrenched racial discrimination. Hobbs focused her research for the book on personal stories from the past –  before integration, Black Power and multiculturalism. Reporter Karen Grigsby Bates’ summary suggested that racial progress prompted by those movements had effectively made the act of passing irrelevant. I beg to differ – I believe these movements caused the evolution of passing but did not erase it or make it irrelevant.

Anyone of color who has ever worked within a majority environment such as corporate America, or in my case the cultural arts, knows that though your skin color may be evident – you are still required to negotiate the majority culture by not revealing too much of who you are. When your aspirations are constrained by how “acceptable” you are to the majority culture then you are effectively passing. If you subjugate or neglect your own culture to assume that of the predominate culture – it may not have the skin-deep appearance of passing but it has the same effect – isolation, loss of self and community. Passing in the 21st century has the added burden of the assumptions some people make because they can see your skin color; that can lead to further complications and indignities. For example, when I was a museum director, during an exhibition opening, an art patron, upon seeing my brown face near the entrance, walked up to me and handed me her coat, assuming I was the valet. She even offered me a tip.

I used these post civil rights movement experiences as well as the history of passing to inform the characters and their actions in my novel, Provenance. The main protagonist is a man who, like the people in Allyson Hobbs’ book, passes as white in the early 20th Century in order to access opportunities not available to a black man. Another character, a 21st Century millennial and a curatorial rising star at a major art museum, is passing culturally. Her expertise is in 20th Century Impressionist art belies the assumption that her discipline must be African or African-American art and, as she moves further up the professional ladder in the art world, she is distanced from her family’s cultural experience.

At its essence, similar to my novel, passing is about identity – who we are, and how others see us. The way my characters pass – racially and culturally – compares and contrasts what passing was then and is now.