BOOK INFORMATION:
Book Title: There There
Author: Tommy Orange
Publishing Date: June 5th, 2018
Publisher: Knopf
Page Count: 294 pages
Source: From the Library
Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking—Tommy Orange’s first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen, and it introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career.
There There is a relentlessly paced multigenerational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. It tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and unspeakable loss.
Here is a voice we have never heard—a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with stunning urgency and force. Tommy Orange writes of the urban Native American, the Native American in the city, in a stunning novel that grapples with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide. An unforgettable debut, destined to become required reading in schools and universities across the country.
Links for purchase: Amazon // Barnes and Noble // Abe Books // Book Depository
MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK:
"Don't ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen."
There there is a wonderful debut novel that captures a view of modern “urban native Americans” through constantly moving into a third person perspective. I found this to be filled interesting, relevant topics given our current political climate. It ultimately showed that Native Americans are not a stereotype, they are a people connected by an identity. I have to be honest when I say that I was incredibly nervous when I opened this book. I really wanted it to deliver for me, and boy did it.
The author Tommy Orange takes a number of risks when creating this novel. And I am so glad he did because I came away from this book completely and utterly changed. This book creates such a powerful story, I struggle to see how anyone could not enjoy it when reading.
This book is needed due to its sociopolitical implications but it is so much more than that. Orange’s characters are vibrant and incredibly complex. They aren’t just characters on a page, each one of them has an incredibly unique voice. The writing style of these characters just creates such an engaging novel.
The thing that made me nervous to read this novel was I figured that natives would be stereotyped. You know, the way a lot of people think about natives and reservation. But it really deals with the struggles of modern natives whose reservations and lands are surrounded by cities. Living in an area that is surrounded by several urban reservations, I can see first hand about some of these struggles faced by Native Americans today. Of course, not first hand, but I see them. The struggles with identity, the struggles with community, the poverty, the substance abuse, and sometimes the domestic violence. It is all real and its a major issue.
It is really easy to think of Native Americans as a cartoon character with feathers and headdresses but of course, the truth is they are human beings that have been treated horribly and had their cultures gutted. It is such complicated issues, and this book deals with that in a powerful way.
This book deals with how hard it is to survive in a society that has been created by white Europeans while trying to preserve as much as you can of the culture you come from. Something that those same white Europeans worked super hard to erase and eradicate.
The writing style is what defines this book for me. The novel is extremely accessible to readers of all genres. Literary fiction can sometimes be contrived and hard to read in my opinion but this is completely the opposite. This book was literally a pleasure to read and I could barely put it down.
This is an extremely insightful novel, with superb memorable characters. I hope that you take the chance and pick this novel up. I am so glad my favorite librarian recommended it to me. I can’t believe it took me this long to pick up.
