Lalita Tademy

thumb|Lalita Tademy in 2015 Lalita Tademy (born December 26, 1948) is an American novelist, speaker, businesswoman, and literary critic who is regarded as one of the central figures in African feminism of African diaspora. Her first novel and magnum opus, Cane River (2001), focused on history and black women in the 1950s and has shaped her perspective on the history of the United States. Quotes "My childhood had a great influence in making me very determined to be independent and listen to my own voice. And that really put me in very good stead when I started my corporate career. I had built up my career, and I had climbed the corporate ladder. After a couple of decades, I had worked myself up to being a Vice President and General Manager of a Fortune 500 Company in Silicon Valley." "I literally woke up one morning and said 'I am going to write a book.' I didn't write it from chapter one. I just tried to get to know who these women [my ancestors] were. I wrote in their voices for a couple of months. I would write it as a diary, and then I would put two of them in the room together and see how they interacted with one another. And then I put three in a room together until I began to really feel that I had a handle on who they were and how they would react. And what happened was a novel." Interview with the Author Lalita Tademy “There is a special way of seeing come with age and distance, a kind of knowing how things happen even without knowing why. Seeing what show up one or two generations removed, from a father to a son or grandson, like repeating threads weaving through the same bolt of cloth. Repeating scraps at the foot and the head of a quilt.” “We been writ out of the history of this town. They got a metal marker down to the courthouse tell a crazy twisting of what really happen Easter Sunday sixty years ago. The ones with the upper hand make the story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked into thinking it real but writing down don’t make it so. The littlest colored child in Colfax, Louisiana, know better than to speak the truth of that time out loud, but real stories somehow carry forward, generation to generation.” “Making a better way for the children. In the end, making a better life for our children what we all want.” Red River,2006 "It isn't as if there were a lot of women, let alone African American women vice presidents," Tademy said. "There was a lot of bewilderment. And then 18 months later, when I said I was going to write a book, that's when people's eyes rolled back in their heads." "In my head, I lived on the plantation, and then I lived through the Civil War, and then I lived in Reconstruction and then I lived in the Jim Crow South, " she said. "It was always very personal, and I think that's something that's an added complexity. I was these women, but on the flip side, they were me. I really felt them as ancestors, not just characters I made up." "An author's life is very solitary and that part is sometimes difficult," she said. "I think about how stimulating it was to have so many smart people around (at Sun Microsystems), but I enjoy this." Tracing her roots / Lalita Tademy quit the corporate life to write a novel about her family history,1 June 2001 “You can’t tell how heavy somebody else’s load is just from looking. The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can carry.” “Sometimes while you wait for what you think is better … what is good enough slips away.” “There is nothing more satisfying than having plans.” 25 Great Quotes on Writing and Life,22 May 2017 “This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.” Cane River,28 December 2018 External Links Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Novelists from California Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Feminists from the United States Category:Literary critics Category:Critics from the United States Category:20th-century American businesswomen Category:Orators from the United States Category:20th-century African-American women