Map of Salt and Stars

 Links to interviews listed on author's website:

http://www.zeynjoukhadar.com/interviews/

Library Journal

LJ Reviews 2018 April #1

After the death of her beloved father, imaginative 11-year-old Nour leaves New York City, where she was born, and returns home with her cartographer mother and two older sisters to the family's native Syria, where bombs released by Assad's forces soon destroy their home and send them on a desperate flight across North Africa. More than 800 years earlier, Rawiya, the daughter of an impoverished widow, disguises herself as a boy and leaves medieval Ceuta—modern Spain's foothold on the African coast—and apprentices herself to a mapmaker, traveling with him throughout the Levant. The stories are deftly interwoven, for Nour's father has told her about Rawiya's fabulous, sometimes mythic adventures. Parallels abound, from the spunky, triumphant heroines to mapmaking as a key to finding oneself to the special stone Nour hunts, once the eye of a terrifying winged creature battled by Rawiya. Debut novelist Joukhadar gracefully balances the gritty, often horrific truth of the refugee's plight with the lyrical near-fairy tale she has created (in both time periods), layered with burnished hope and occasionally overplayed sentiment. VERDICT A wise, vibrantly told story for a wide range of readers, particularly relevant now.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2018 Library Journal.

Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews 2018 March #2

The story of a contemporary girl's flight into exile from the Syrian civil war is deepened by the parallel tale of a 12th-century girl whose journey of discovery covers the same geography in Syrian-American writer Joukhadar's ambitious debut. The poem in the shape of Syria that opens this novel—"O / beloved, you are / dying of a broken heart"—sets the tone of deep-rooted melancholy for the story that follows. Twelve-year-old Nour was born and raised in Manhattan by immigrant parents, her mother a cartographer and her father a bridge designer. Shortly after her father's death from cancer in 2011, her mother moves Nour and her two older sisters, Huda and Zahra, to Homs, Syria, where they have relatives to help out. But soon bombs are dropping in Homs. As the family takes flight, Nour comforts herself with a fairy tale-like story her father used to tell, and Joukhadar weaves it into the narrative. "Everybody knows the story of Rawiya," she writes. "They just don't know they know it." The heroine, 16-year-old Rawiya, left her home in Ceuta—a Spanish city in North Africa where Nour's parents once lived—to avoid starvation. Disguised as a boy, she apprenticed herself to al-Idrisi—an actual 12th-century mapmaker—as he traveled around charting trade routes. The route of Rawiya's story corresponds with Nour's as she finds and loses refuge in Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. Passing as a boy for safety's sake, as Rawiya did, Nour endures cold, hunger, and red tape. Though she lives at the epicenter of world crises, what affects her day to day are more personal crises experienced in bus terminals, small groceries, and dusty streets. More dramatically, her sister Huda is injured by a bomb and sexually attacked by a gang of boys; a family friend drowns when a ferry to Egypt catches fire. While Rawiya had a romantic adventure, Nour experiences the terrors of being a refugee. Yet both are fatherless girls growing into young womanhood, and they share a similar search for the meaning of home, both physical and spiritual.
Joukhadar plunges the Western reader full force into the refugee world with sensual imagery that is immediate, intense, and at times overwhelming. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

BookPage Reviews

BookPage Reviews 2018 May

Two lives, a thousand years apart

Among the many things the violence of war obliterates, perhaps the most malicious is history. Now in its seventh year, the civil war that has turned Syria into the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises has also corseted one of the oldest societies on earth into a kind of perpetual infancy. Syria, it sometimes seems, only began to exist seven years ago, as a place defined only by its current calamity.

In many ways, The Map of Salt and Stars is at once a testament to the brutality of the current Syrian conflict and a reverent ode to ancient Arabian history. Syrian-American writer Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar has crafted an audacious debut, ambitious and sprawling in both time and space.

The book follows the story of Nour, a Syrian-American girl living in New York. In 2011, after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother decides to move the family back to Homs to be close to their extended family. But Nour’s arrival coincides with Syria’s slide into civil war. Amid grotesque violence, Nour is made a refugee, a traveler through Syria’s neighboring lands.

Almost a thousand years earlier, another girl’s story unfolds. Rawiya, seeking a better life for her mother, disguises herself as a boy and joins a legendary cartographer on a quest to map the known world.

The two stories unfold side by side, split by time but joined by a common geography. Because the modern part of Joukhadar’s narrative carries the urgency of the present tense, but the ancient half reads like an old Arabian fairy tale, the dual story structure is at first jarring. But soon the book finds its pace, and the intertwining tales complement each other in ways a single narrative could not. A swooping bird of prey that threatens to devour the ancient story’s traveling companions finds its modern-day analogy in the form of Syrian fighter planes dropping bombs on besieged cities.

There is a heartfelt quality to the story, evident in the meticulous historical research that must have gone into the creation of the ancient part of the book. The Map of Salt and Stars presents an Arab world in full possession of its immense historical and cultural biography, marred by its modern tragedies but not exclusively defined by them.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/books/review/jennifer-zeynab-joukhadar-map-of-salt-and-stars.html

The ancient, sometimes
mystical connection between maps, people and knowledge is central to Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar’s “The Map of Salt and Stars,” a double tale of voyage and exile that moves between contemporary war-torn Syria and the caravansaries and khans of its lost past. Maps are mentioned on almost every page: not just making them but the decisions that making them involves, what lands they cover and what lands they leave out…….

Nour’s story of displacement is interwoven with the fantastical, speculative tale of another young woman, Rawiya, who runs away from her Syrian village centuries earlier. Seeking out a legendary mapmaker, Al-Idrisi, she joins him as his apprentice on a long voyage. The two stories unfold gracefully, mirroring and overlapping…..

Grief is a constant echo, particularly the loss of Nour’s father. Without him the family members become increasingly unmoored; we feel Nour’s homesickness intensely, along with her sense of not belonging in her mother’s country. “What kind of Syrian are you?” her sister snaps. “You don’t even speak Arabic.”....

Same stars, different story. “The Map of Salt and Stars” is important and timely because it shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be. Our many stories are part of the same larger tale, part of the same larger map.

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https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/book_number/3772/the-map-of-salt-and-stars#btb

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https://www.synesthesiatest.org

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Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. What can you surmise from the novel about Baba's connection to each of his daughters and how the girls come to depend on those bonds after the bombing in Syria?

2. How do the two different timelines influence the plot? Was this an effective way to tell the story? What demands does it place upon you, and what are its pleasures? Did it help you to feel closer to the characters? Why or why not?

3. What effect does Baba's death have on Noor's mother and her relationship with her daughters?

4. What affect does Abu Sayeed's arrival have on Nour and her family? Compare and contrast Abu Sayeed's relationship with Mama, Zahra, and Nour. Discuss the role of family and community in the lives of the characters. Provide examples of the different ways the author defines family in the novel.

5. How is The Map of Salt and Stars like others novels you have read about refugees, and how is it different? How much did you know about the Syrian refuge crisis before reading the novel? How does the novel challenge your perception of the Syrian refugee crisis?

6. How do the characters rely on their religion throughout the novel?

7. What meaning does the title of the novel hold for the characters? Why do you think the author chose this and what does it mean to you?

8. Child narrators in adult fiction are often used to question things that adults might take for granted. Did having Nour as the narrator for The Map of Salt and Stars change the way you viewed the events of the novel? Compare and contrast the benefits and disadvantages of having a young narrator.

9. Evaluate the importance of the constellations and how the stars help to advance the story in both timelines. Discuss the symbolism of birds.

10. What is the significance of the stone and why does Nour discard it?

11. Khaldun says, "the words of others can overwhelm and drown out your own. So, you see, you must keep careful track of the borders of your stories, where your voice ends and another's begins" (page 133). Discuss the power of stories and the importance of the stories to the characters. Provide examples of the characters protecting their voices. How do you stay true to yourself?

12. Nour says to Yusuf, "I thought you were like the other bad men" (page 223). Discuss the significance of Yusuf. Where you expecting a different outcome for his character? Explain your answers.

13. How do the characters react to the trauma of sexual violence? What are its lasting effects? Analyze the reasons why Nour tells Yusuf and no one else about Huda's attack, and why Huda chooses not to choose to disclose the attack immediately. What was your reaction to that scene?

14. Huda, Zahra, and Nour are very different? What makes them alike as sisters, and what sets them apart? How do they evolve over the course of the novel?

15. Compare and contrast the storylines of Rawiya and Nour. Discuss how Nour's superpower and Rawiya's being the roc slayer helped to save their families.

16. What is al-Idrisi's role in the story? Does knowing that this character is based on a real person affect the way you read the novel? What are some of the pleasures and drawbacks of reading historical novels? Discuss what might have happened to the planisphere "guarded forever, safe from selfish hands" (page 307).

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Are you a synesthete? Go to this website https://www.synesthesiatest.org/ to find out.

2. Create a map depicting places you traveled that had a major impact on your life when you were Nour's age. What did you learn from that time? How did you change after that experience?

3. Name your top five favorite books with a child narrator. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a young narrator?

4. The Map of Salt and Stars for the most part is a very realistic coming-of-age story of a Syrian refugee, but there are several instances when the story reveals magical elements. Provide examples from the novel of magical realism. How do these moments enhance the plot?

5. Visit the author's website (http://www.jenniferjoukhadar.com/books/) to learn more and to read her collection of short stories and essays.

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https://www.shelf-awareness.com/max-issue.html?issue=277#m590

Did you make up Rawiya's story?

Yes and no. Rawiya herself is a fictional character. The specifics of her journey with al-Idrisi (a real cartographer) are fictionalized; no one knows exactly how much of the knowledge al-Idrisi gained for his map and book was gathered firsthand; much of it was obtained through talking to the merchants and other travelers who passed through Palermo while he was living and working in King Roger II's court. This fictionalized account is also permeated by fable and magic. But I tried to ground the journey in fact, for example in the conflicts between various groups taking place at the time--such as the Second Crusade--and the territories controlled by different Amazigh dynasties across North Africa.

Is using two parallel stories a typical Arab storytelling technique?

Telling two parallel stories was both very difficult and very addicting, and it's something I'm doing again (though in a slightly different way) in my second novel. I did draw many maps, and I did have to keep track of the names of places in the 12th and 21st centuries, and I drank a lot of chai!

Weaving two or more stories together is a traditional Arab storytelling technique, one that is done extremely well in Rabih Alameddine's The Hakawati, one of my favorite novels. I find that with multiple stories, each one can illuminate aspects of the others without being too heavy handed, so the reader comes away with a layered and intuitive understanding of what the writer is trying to say. It is difficult to keep the various stories balanced, though, and to make the parallels between them visible enough to be noticed but not so obvious as to feel moralizing. Timing is everything.

Nour finds salt everywhere after her father dies, beginning with her mother's tears. Salt is a theme throughout the book. What is the significance?

For me, salt is a symbol not only of grief and of trauma, but of the struggle to make something beautiful of life in spite of those things. For example, salt is not only present in tears and in the sea, but also as a naturally occurring imperfection in precious stones. This does not mean suffering and trauma are good or necessary at all; I don't believe that. But if trauma does happen to us--particularly the violence inherent in war, displacement, and human cruelty--I wanted to ask: How can one make something beautiful of a life that has been irrevocably changed? What can we take with us after loss that can sustain us through, and beyond, that darkness?

Zahra criticizes Nour because she doesn't speak Arabic, thus doesn't know what it means to be Syrian. Was that your experience growing up?

Growing up, it was sometimes difficult to be an Arab who did not speak Arabic. Arab peoples have historically been defined and united, for better and sometimes for worse, by language. But there are plenty of Muslims who don't speak Arabic, or only know a little through the language of prayer. So I think there are other ways of looking at one's identity as an Arab and/or as a Muslim that don't hinge on speaking Arabic. Learning Arabic was something I needed to do to connect more deeply with my heritage, my relationships with my family, and also myself.

I was born and live in diaspora, and this gives me a unique perspective, one that I've learned over the years to accept and value for what it is. For me, it can often mean having a sense of belonging to more than one place and also belonging nowhere, and this creates its own struggles and questions. I tried to let these questions breathe in the text without forcing answers.

The Map of Salt and Stars brings attention to the plight of today's Syrians, and other refugees. 

I would very much like for this book to start a discussion about and increase empathy for Syrians, for refugees, and for displaced people in general. I cannot stand by and watch racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in my own home country lead to things like the Muslim ban without doing what little I can to fight against that. I am connected to Syria. This is the land of my father's birth, the land of my family and my ancestors, the home of people I love. When Westerners present uninformed, fear-driven or racist views on Syrians and on Syrian refugees, they are, in a very real way, talking about people like my family. They could very easily be talking about me. I hope that this book makes them reconsider those views.

With that said, I don't want readers to come away from this book thinking they know everything about Syrian refugees or that they know what it is to be one. I think this happens all too often with underrepresented voices in literature--a single story can be taken as the only one that is necessary for understanding, and that's never true. I want readers to understand that, if they haven't read anything by Syrians or refugees in their own words, this book is only a starting point.

I also hope that this book will be a comfort to people of Syrian descent living in diaspora. I hope it will remind them, in some small way, of our rich heritage, our storytelling traditions, our imagination, our discoveries, our history. It's especially rare for Syrian Americans to see themselves represented in literature. I hope it will be a reminder that we, too, can be the protagonists of our own stories, that there is an alternative to the stories that so often get told in the West about Syrians these days, about Arabs, about Muslims.

One of the most moving things that happened to me recently was that another Syrian American person saw the Arabic on the cover of The Map of Salt and Starsand began to cry. It was something they had never seen on the cover of a novel growing up. That's also what I hope for this book--that it makes other diasporic Syrians and Arabs feel seen, because to feel seen is also to feel hope, and hope in particular is a gift I want to give to my communities these days. --Marilyn Dahl

 

 

There, There by Tommy Orange

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/18/621011107/pithy-and-pointed-there-there-puts-native-american-voices-front-and-center

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/books/review-there-there-tommy-orange.html

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https://fictionmattersbooks.com/article/teaching-review-there-there-tommy-orange

Publisher's Summary:

Tommy Orange’s shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to each other in ways they may not yet realize. There is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and working to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, who is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death, has come to work at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil has come to perform traditional dance for the very first time. 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. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, utterly contemporary and always unforgettable.

Why There There Matters:

There There is an instant classic and, in my mind, ought to be required reading in American Literature. Native voices and stories are almost entirely absent in most American Literature classrooms and There There offers an even more overlooked perspective by featuring urban American Indian characters written by Native author, Tommy Orange. And what a phenomenal writer Orange is. His writing is visceral, yet poetic. He uses an innovative structure that is vital to the central message of the text and furthers the themes of storytelling and identity. The book is undoubtedly emotionally moving, yet through several analytical and historical interludes, Orange simultaneously offers the reader a cerebral experience. There is so much nuance and complexity at work in this text that it is sure challenge and engage every reader in the classroom.

The most difficult aspect of teaching this text may be keeping track of the twelve point-of-view protagonists, but this could be easily tackled with graphic organizers, jigsawing, or other in-class activities. In general, multiple POV books are often beloved by students outside of the classroom, but rare in the English curriculum. I love multiple POV books as a way of exploring how every character--and every person--perceives the same events differently. This understanding is infinitely valuable for students as readers and as people. In this text specifically, I value the diversity of perspectives Orange gives to his characters. There are men and women, teenagers and grandparents. Some characters are tribally enrolled and deeply connected to their heritage, while others are just getting in touch with this aspect of their identities. 

Due to the complexity of the language and intensity of the subject matter, There There won’t be a book that is easy for students to read. It will, however, be well-worth the effort and by the time the novel’s stories intersect and the pace picks up, students will be hooked. I really hope to be lucky enough to teach this book one day.

**For more insights on bringing Native authors into the classroom, I highly recommend this article by Graham Lee Brewer in the High Country News and following Dr. Debbie Reese (@debreese) on Twitter.

Teacher Talk:

Themes and Social Issues: Identity,  culture, colonization & assimilation, storytelling.

Literary Features: This would be a great novel to use in a unit on structure and pace. There’s a lot to analyze in Orange’s use of parts, segments, and interludes, as well as the way the novel builds from a slow-paced character study to a warp-speed close up of a tragedy. Because there is an array of strikingly different point-of-view characters, There There could also be used to discuss voice and perspective. The novel also offers much to discuss about characterization, both how characters portray themselves and how others see them, and symbolism, particularly through the recurring imagery of the Indian Head.

Pairs Well With: Early American Literature, An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Joy Luck Club, Homegoing

Content Awareness: While this is undoubtedly a violent story, everything in the novel feels purposeful and essential. The novel includes a mass shooting, beatings, an allusion to rape, and some graphic references to bodily functions.

Grade Level Recommendation: 11-12. There, There would be particularly well-situated in an American Literature classroom.

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https://www.tribes.org/web/2018/7/2/native-americanor-indianor-whatever-you-call-us-there-there-book-review

“There There” is not a western about cowboys and Indians. We are not cooking fry bread or beading regalia while riding horses with our long flowing feathered braids bouncing within the woods. “There There” is a powwow in itself, a gathering of nations, of tribes, of ideas; a celebration (or in this case tragedy.) Orange has successfully presented to us a new voice for the contemporary Native community and the Urban Native generation. Outlining and sharing a solid perspective of who we are as a people -- and underlining the fact that we are not extinct like the dinosaurs, but rather very much alive.

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https://www.gradesaver.com/there-there/study-guide/symbols-allegory-motifs

There There Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Indian Head (Motif)

This motif is the central one in the Prologue of There There, a section that also functions as a standalone critical essay. Orange traces this motif throughout American history, beginning with its roots in colonial violence: the beheading of Native Americans and the preservation of their heads as war trophies was a recurrent practice throughout the American colonial frontier. He also shows how the Indian head makes appearances in visual culture: in a test pattern on 20th-century American television, in commercials, as logos, as mascots, in textbooks, on jerseys, and on flags.

Blood (Motif)

Blood is important in There There for a number of reasons. First, it dictates tribal identity in the eyes of the white supremacist state, which dictated Indian rights according to how much Indian blood each person had. Second, it is a motif that shows up every time violence occurs. Blood, Orange writes in the critical essays (Prologue and Interlude), was a common presence throughout colonial history. When blood shows up again on the powwow field, it calls to mind that long arc of history, reminding readers that the tragedy at the powwow is one of many tragedies that Native people have faced since colonial arrival.

Last Names (Motif)

Opal finds her last name onerous. It is too long and children at school mock her for it. In the Interlude, the narrator points out that last names were given to Indians by white men. Native last names are both "poems" and images that make "no sense at all." They represent legacy and family heritage, an important subject for many of the novel's characters. Blue, for example, travels to Oklahoma in search of family members, whom she identifies only by 'Red Feather', a shared last name. Thus, a motif that once stood for colonial subjugation now represents the connection Orange's characters seek.

Oakland and Public Transportation (Symbol)

The city of Oakland is a symbol for the concept of home. The process of change and gentrification in the city represents the Native community's historical loss of home. When the characters navigate around Oakland, they most often do so on a BART train or on the bus. These public spaces are sites of reflection and alienation for characters. As they experience the intersection of their private family sagas with the rest of the world—sometimes jarringly, through racist questions and stares—the trains themselves are personified. Dene, for example, notices that the train's motion aligns and differs from the motion of cars on the freeway and reflects that it signifies "something too big to feel, underneath, and inside, too familiar to recognize, right there in front of you at all times."

Spiders (Symbol) 

Jacquie and Opal's mother taught them that spiders symbolize both home and traps. Throughout the novel, spiders symbolize both the good and the bad inherent to family and connection. Opal articulates the evil side of the spider: she sees Veho, the spider-trickster, in her "uncle," Ronald. Opal found spider legs in her body soon after escaping Ronald's house, which was both a home and a trap to her and her sister after their mother died. Orvil also finds spider legs in his own legs at a point in the novel when he is planning to enter the powwow competition—an act that will bring him more connection to his Native heritage than ever before, but also bring him closer to danger. Thus the spider symbolizes the connection, peace, and danger that can be found in home and community.

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https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/11317-there-there-orange?showall=1

There There  

Tommy Orange, 2018

Knopf Doubleday

302 pp.

ISBN-13: 9780525520375 

Summary

As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow—some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent—momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything.

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 will to perform 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 loss.

There There is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. It’s "masterful … white-hot … devastating" (Washington Post) at the same time as it is fierce, funny, suspenseful, thoroughly modern, and impossible to put down. 

Here is a voice we have never heard—a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. Tommy Orange has written 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. 

This is the book that everyone is talking about right now, and it’s destined to be a classic. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio

• Birth—January 19, 1982

• Where—Oakland, California, USA

• Education—M.F.A., Institute of American Indian Arts

• Currently—lives in Angels Camp, California

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California. (From the publisher.)

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Book Reviews

Bravura… There There has so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation… its appearance marks the passing of a generational baton..

Dwight Garner - New York Times

A new kind of American epic... one that reflects his ambivalence and the complexity of [Orange's] upbringing.

Alexandra Alter - New York Times Book Review

Masterful. White-hot. A devastating debut novel.

Ron Charles - Washington Post

(Starred review) [A] commanding debut…. 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.

Publishers Weekly

(Starred review) [V]isceral…. A chronicle of domestic violence, alcoholism, addiction, and pain, the book reveals the perseverance and spirit of the characters…a broad sweep of lives of Native American people in Oakland and beyond. —Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Library Journal

(Starred review) A symphonic debut.… Engrossing.… There There introduces an exciting voice.

Booklist

(Starred review) [A] kaleidoscopic look at Native American life in Oakland, California…. In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself.

Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions

1. The prologue of There There provides a historical overview of how Native populations were systematically stripped of their identity, their rights, their land, and, in some cases, their very existence by colonialist forces in America. How did reading this section make you feel? How does the prologue set the tone for the reader? Discuss the use of the Indian head as iconography. How does this relate to the erasure of Native identity in American culture?

2. Discuss the development of the "Urban Indian" identity and ownership of that label. How does it relate to the push for assimilation by the United States government? How do the characters in There There navigate this modern form of identity alongside their ancestral roots?

3. Consider the following statement from page 9: "We stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can’t leave a war once you’ve been, you can only keep it at bay." In what ways does the historical precedent for violent removal of Native populations filter into the modern era? How does violence—both internal and external—appear throughout the narrative?

4. On page 7, Orange states: "We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and current state as a people." Discuss this statement in relation to how Native populations have been defined in popular culture. How do the characters in There There resist the simplification and flattening of their cultural identity? Relate the idea of preserving cultural identity to Dene Oxendene’s storytelling mission.

5. Tony Loneman’s perspective both opens and closes There There. Why do you think Orange made this choice for the narrative? What does Loneman’s perspective reveal about the "Urban Indian" identity? About the landscape of Oakland?

6. When readers are first introduced to Dene Oxendene, we learn of his impulse to tag various spots around the city. How did you interpret this act? How does graffiti culture work to recontextualize public spaces?

7. Discuss the interaction between Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield and Two Shoes that occurs on pages 50–52. How does Opal view Two Shoes’s "Indianness"? What is the import of the Teddy Roosevelt anecdote that he shares with her? How does this relate to the overall theme of narrative and authenticity that occurs throughout There There?

8. Describe the resettlement efforts at Alcatraz. What are the goals for inhabiting this land? What vision does Opal and Jacquie’s mother have for her family in moving to Alcatraz?

9. On page 58, Opal’s mother tells her that she needs to honor her people "by living right, by telling our stories. [That] the world was made of stories, nothing else, and stories about stories." How does this emphasis on storytelling function throughout There There? Consider the relationship between storytelling and power. How does storytelling allow for diverse narratives to emerge? What is the relationship between storytelling and historical memory?

10. On page 77, Edwin Black asserts, "The problem with Indigenous art in general is that it’s stuck in the past." How does the tension between modernity and tradition emerge throughout the narrative? Which characters seek to find a balance between honoring the past and looking toward the future? When is the attempt to do so successful?

11. Discuss the generational attitudes toward spirituality in the Native community in There There. Which characters embrace their elders’ spiritual practices? Who doubts the efficacy of those efforts? How did you interpret the incident of Orvil and the spider legs?

12. How is the city of Oakland characterized in the novel? How does the city’s gentrification affect the novel’s characters? Their attitudes toward home and stability?

13. How is femininity depicted in There There? What roles do the female characters assume in their community? Within their families?

14. Discuss Orvil’s choice to participate in the powwow. What attracts him to the event? Why does Opal initially reject his interest in "Indianness"? How do his brothers react to it?

15. Discuss the Interlude that occurs on pages 134–41. What is the import of this section? How does it provide key contextual information for the Big Oakland Powwow that occurs at the end of the novel? What is the significance of this event and others like it for the Native community?

16. Examine the structure of There There. Why do you think Orange chose to present his narrative using different voices and different perspectives? How do the interlude and the prologue help to bolster the themes of the narrative? What was the most surprising element of the novel to you? What was its moment of greatest impact?

(Questions issued by the publishers.)