Attica Locke, author of the recently published novel 'Black Water Rising,' discusses how the news informs her work and offers her take on race relations in the news.
1. As a writer, how does the news inform or affect your work?
The truth is always a jumping off point for me. As a writer who is consistently drawn to stories that have big, socio-political themes, I routinely look to current events for research and also inspiration. I still clip articles from newspapers when I come across a story that interests me.
2. Your book, 'Black Water Rising,' is a mystery that takes place in Houston in the early 1980s and is based on a childhood experience on a dark Bayou. What was happening in the news around that time?
Houston in 1981 was a really interesting city. It was flush with oil money, and the city was getting a lot of international attention. Houston seemed to represent the conspicuous consumption and the blind optimism of the early Reagan era. Also, Houston had its first woman mayor at the time. And she was charged with leading the city through a period of unprecedented growth – which had its own challenges. I grew up in Houston, so some of what I wrote about the city was from memory, but the rest I pulled from old newspaper and magazine articles. Most of my research came from journalists’ reporting – articles about problems in the police department and its fights with the mayor; and magazine and newspaper stories that began to signal the end of the oil boom, which would eventually crush Houston’s economy.
3. Race relations play a central role in the book’s narrative—the main character, a black man, rescues a white woman, which without giving too much away provides the basis for the mystery. What have you thought about the national conversation on race this summer post Gates and post Carter?
I think, as a country, we’re in transition. As we've seen with the recent election of Barack Obama, America has a great capacity for self-correction. But change, when it comes fast and furious, can do a number on our psyches. This is the tension that Jay, the main character, is living in. It can be hard to know one's place when the rules have suddenly changed. Which is why you have all these birthers and tea-baggers and Glenn Beck followers – 99% of whom are white – who are losing their minds on the other side of the election of the nation’s first black president. You know, before they started arming themselves, I actually felt tremendous compassion for all these people saying, “I want my country back,” because it’s true that the country they once knew – culturally and politically – is gone. It’s possible that some people need to mourn that. All of the racial anxiety we’re seeing of late is, to me, a form of growing pains. We, as a country, are going to be better for what we’re wrestling with right now.
4. You’re also working on a piece for HBO with Taylor Branch about the civil rights movement—what kind of new ground does the piece cover?
The plan is to do three two-hour movies that are adaptations of Taylor Branch’s trilogy about the civil rights movement. What’s fresh about the material is that it challenges the overly simplistic (and popular) view of history that the movement was all about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Taylor’s books are more panoramic and shine a light on a whole host of other people who helped change our country. Also, the story we want to tell takes a deeper look at the philosophy of nonviolence.
5. What could news outlets do better a better job of when it comes to covering race in America? Or, if you could change one thing about the way news outlets discuss or don’t discuss race in America, what would you change?
I wish the news media – and the culture at large – would stop treating color-blindness as a virtue. I think it’s done a great disservice to our country and our ability to even talk about race. I don’t want to live in a post-racial society. I want to live in a society where we see our individual differences and still respect each other – not just in spite of our differences, but because of them. When we send people the message that even acknowledging race – seeing it – is impolite, at best, or at worst, racist, then it shuts down any discussion on the topic.
