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.