There There
A novel
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4.0 • 1.2K Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.
A contemporary classic, this “astonishing literary debut” (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale) “places Native American voices front and center” (NPR/Fresh Air).
Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism
A book with “so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation” (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down--full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We finished Tommy Orange’s astonishing debut in tears. There There unfolds as a series of vignettes, introducing us to a large cast of characters; most are Native Americans living in Oakland, a.k.a. Urban Indians. Orange’s writing is propelled by rage and sorrow and sustained by street-smart humor and gorgeous poetry. Suspenseful and unforgettable, this book is one you’ll want to share with all your friends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Orange's commanding debut chronicles contemporary Native Americans in Oakland, as their lives collide in the days leading up to the city's inaugural Big Oakland Powwow. Bouncing between voices and points of view, Orange introduces 12 characters, their plotlines hinging on things like 3-D printed handguns and VR-controlled drones. Tony Loneman and Octavio Gomez see the powwow as an opportunity to pay off drug debts via a brazen robbery. Others, like Edwin Black and Orvil Red Feather, view the gathering as a way to connect with ancestry and, in Edwin's case, to meet his father for the first time. Blue, who was given up for adoption, travels to Oklahoma in an attempt to learn about her family, only to return to Oakland as the powwow's coordinator. Orvil's grandmother, Jacquie, who abandoned her family years earlier, reappears in the city with powwow emcee Harvey, whom she briefly dated when the duo lived on Alcatraz Island as adolescents. Time and again, the city is a magnet for these individuals. The propulsion of both the overall narrative and its players are breathtaking as Orange unpacks how decisions of the past mold the present, resulting in a haunting and gripping story.
Customer Reviews
Stepping outside yourself
Reading this book over the course of months, on camping trips and at home, I had an adventure inside my adventures. Introspective, poetic, irreverent read. as a non Native American, reading about the “native” experience felt more like the “human” experience. I appreciated the multi dimensional tone and my only complaint is that at the end got a little confused as to what character was doing what or what was happening to what. When I read the last page, I felt a wave of emotional response come over me and tears welled in my eyes. Sitting with that feeling was worth reading the whole book. Tragically beautiful.
Buried History
I was not sure what I was getting into when I picked up this book but I know I wanted to read more about Native stories. What I got was a philosophical treatise on all things America and a Native, couched neatly in a multi perspective family drama. Specifically, we see over generations that the idea of America for its original people has been a history of evil and tragedy visited upon them without end.
Tommy Orange shows us how that violence never stops, but gets reimagined and doled out sometimes by your own people. The timelines that Tommy Orange walk us through show us how this violence erases and then rewrites; often by the oppressors. This erasure leads to lost heritage and broken lineages between generations. Each line of the family tree moving further away from the trunk with almost no common connection but trauma.
That’s where the book really shines. Where it highlights the compound effects of generational trauma. In some ways I was reminded of Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” but from a Native perspective. Tommy Orange employs multiple perspectives on what it means to be rudderless and without a home while facing uncertain futures. This divergent perspectives also make the storytelling more dynamic. Characters relive histories as a way of rebuilding the self and community while also reclaiming the narrative. All the while the author raises questions of how modern technology helps to amplify agency or diminish it.
So much to thank about
This novel has so many levels of reflection. It transformed my perception of American Indians and the complex, lasting effects of their persecution.