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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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“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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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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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.)
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.)
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
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.)
