Synopsis
Attica Locke talks about her new book set on a Louisiana plantation turned museum, where African-American actors play slaves and modern tourists see a glossy interpretation of the past.
Front Row | 19/11/2009
'I intended to just write a slick little thriller' Attica Locke said about her debut novel, Dark Water Rising, but it also tackles big themes of American race relations and the civil rights movement. The story is set in Houston in 1981 and focuses on a disillusioned black lawyer struggling to achieve material success while weighed down by a past as a civil rights worker. Attica was named after the 1971 prison rising and both her parents were civil rights activists.
Front Row | Attica Locke
Attica Locke's latest novel features murder, powerful, dirty oil companies, and corrupt politicians, set in Pleasantville: a neighbourhood that, when it was built in 1949, had been advertised as "a planned community of new homes, spacious and modern in design, and built specifically for Negro families of means and class." She explains to Kirsty why this provided the perfect setting for her book.