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There There A novel Tommy Orange Books

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There There A novel Tommy Orange Books

I just finished "There There", by Tommy Orange and I’m so glad to have read it - though sometimes it was difficult:

This book will make you sad - read it anyway.
This book will make you mad - read it anyway.
This book will remind you of the lies we were taught as children - read it to remember.
This book will remind you not to tell those lies anymore - read it to know the truth.
This book will make you smile – know hope.
This book will ruin Thanksgiving for you - read it so you can re-think your future Thanksgivings.

"There There", (the title referring to an out-of-context quote by Gertrude Stein about Oakland, CA) is fascinating, heartbreaking, frustrating and ultimately hopeful. The novel is comprised of individual, but interconnected/interrelated stories by a dozen characters; their stories and actions will culminate at the “Big Oakland Powwow”. (There are some major coincidences – but just suspend your disbelief and let it go!) The section on Dene Oxendene, somewhat mirrors the premise: Dene wants to make a documentary film of various Native Americans talking about their life experiences of living in Oakland, and that is pretty much the description of this novel – plus some mysteries and some shocking action.

Summing it up best, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield’s Mother tells her that the world is made up of stories and that they honor their people by telling their stories. And that’s how Tommy Orange honors his people, and his readers, with these transforming and redemptive stories.


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There There A novel Tommy Orange Books Reviews

What does it mean to be a Native American—often invisible in the U.S. tapestry? Documentary filmmaker Dene Oxendene, one of a dozen characters whom we meet in this book, gives his take (based on Gertrude Stein's famous quote about Oakland, "There is no there there.") He says “This there there. He hadn’t read Gertrude Stein beyond the quote. But for Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it’s been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, unreturnable covered memory. There is no there there.”

Reminiscent in ways of the movie Crash, these characters—who eventually come together in the Big Oakland Powwow—crash into each other intermittently, leaving behind sadness and often scars.

There’s Jacquie Red Feather, one of the characters we get to know the most, an alcoholic who is facing the tatters of her past and on her way to her future—finally meeting her three grandsons. Her daughter Blue, whom she never met (and who has given up those boys) is fleeing an abusive marriage. The oldest of the sons, Orvil, is pulling spider legs out of his own leg wound and wrestling about what it means to be Indian. And then there are the others —Danny who creates plastic guns on a 3D printer, Edwin who loses himself in overeating, Thomas who is half-white and floundering in his life.

Tommy Orange’s purpose is clear; he wants us to know that the term “Native” cannot be easily defined and, in fact, encompasses many kinds of people who share the burden of alienation, isolation and cruel history. They come to the annual Big Oakland Powow for different reasons “The messy, dangling strands of our lives got pulled into a braid—tied to the back of everything we’ve been doing all along to get us here…we’ve been coming for years, generations, lifetimes, layered in prayer and hand-woven regalia, beaded and sewn together, feathered, braided, blessed, and cursed.”

This is a major contribution to Urban Indian literature; I’ve never read anything quite like it. But it also defines all of us, as Americans, in many important ways. Tommy Orange has power to spare.
When I first saw the title of this book, I read it as soothing words of comfort, but I had it totally wrong. Taking the famous Gertrude Stein quote "There is no there there," Tommy Orange explains that this seeming indictment of Oakland, California as a featureless hole in the landscape is not what Stein meant. Further reading of the quote proves she found her hometown unrecognizable as the place of her memory. The entirety of the United States could be classified as such, given the effects of progress perpetuated on native Americans by colonizers. Late in the book, the broken promises, actual crimes and genocide are related metaphorically through a story written by one of the characters.

And what characters populate these pages. There are approximately 12 main ones, each embodying a fact of urban Native American identity. These complex relationships form a patchwork that make the outcome inevitable. There is search for family, identity and place, many feeling marginalized and invisible in the urban setting they find themselves. Earlier chapters provide character studies that present the players, their histories and motivations, so clearly the prose flows and pages fly by, followed by an almost cinematic speedup as the climax approaches.

Full disclosure - I began this book several days ago employing the audible edition, but found it was too rich and full to continue that way and had to begin all over again with a print version.
This Canterbury Tales-style novel, in which a series of characters (all Native people) are introduced, and ultimately brought together at a modern Powwow, was strangely unsatisfying. Attempts to keep the characters straight made me feel as if I were suffering from attention deficit disorder; just as I gained any sense of a newly-introduced player (and any investment in his survival) the narrative switched to someone new. (Loother, we hardly knew ye.) Everyone ends up at the Powwow. There is a lot of random gunfire. Many of our new-found friends end up shot, some fatally, but we don't get to know who survives. ???
However, if one steps outside the plot and listens to the voices of these wounded people, all trying to find some place to stand and build their lives, time spent with this book is not wasted.
I just finished "There There", by Tommy Orange and I’m so glad to have read it - though sometimes it was difficult

This book will make you sad - read it anyway.
This book will make you mad - read it anyway.
This book will remind you of the lies we were taught as children - read it to remember.
This book will remind you not to tell those lies anymore - read it to know the truth.
This book will make you smile – know hope.
This book will ruin Thanksgiving for you - read it so you can re-think your future Thanksgivings.

"There There", (the title referring to an out-of-context quote by Gertrude Stein about Oakland, CA) is fascinating, heartbreaking, frustrating and ultimately hopeful. The novel is comprised of individual, but interconnected/interrelated stories by a dozen characters; their stories and actions will culminate at the “Big Oakland Powwow”. (There are some major coincidences – but just suspend your disbelief and let it go!) The section on Dene Oxendene, somewhat mirrors the premise Dene wants to make a documentary film of various Native Americans talking about their life experiences of living in Oakland, and that is pretty much the description of this novel – plus some mysteries and some shocking action.

Summing it up best, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield’s Mother tells her that the world is made up of stories and that they honor their people by telling their stories. And that’s how Tommy Orange honors his people, and his readers, with these transforming and redemptive stories.