Will I love There There?

Totally fresh and original about the urban lives of Native Americans - this book really made me think, and think hard. Well worth the time, this can be an uncomfortable read.

I loved the book because it’s an insightful window into the challenges of a troubled community, the native Indians, who are still haunted by the painful past and face an uncertain future. I loved how the writer picks the thread of stories of many characters who have chosen to live outside reservations and then knits them all together in the end.

Unique characters with unique stories and strong evocative writing make There There a remarkable debut.  

This book confronts stereotypes about where Indigenous people can be found by telling readers that cities are as familiar and as much home to them as reservations became. This is an edgy and quick-paced novel of “urban Indians” and what it means to live in a landscape that is yours but, practically speaking, no longer belongs to you.

In the vein of Erdrich and Silko, Orange weaves together the diverse experiences and complex emotions of a multigenerational cast of characters that had me eagerly tacking back and forth between their stories in anticipation of their reunion at the Big Oakland… show more.

I really liked Tommy Orange's book because it places Native people in an urban context, which is where the majority of Native Americans live. It showed the adaptations our people make to urban environments while maintaining connections across generations. It shows that being Indigenous is "of the land" even when someone is displaced from the exact piece of land they came from through the reforging of community and connection.

The storytelling is constructed in an interesting way, too, because multiple characters, each on their own tense journey, start converging and colliding with one another in a great crescendo to the… show more.

"There’s no there there." -Gertrude Stein

This book centers around the plight of twelve young, urban Native Americans in Oakland, California, who, having lost connection to the land and their heritage, struggle to make sense of their identity. For various reasons, they all travel to and converge at the Big Oakland Powwow.

It is a gut-wrenching story that grapples with the disenfranchisement of Native Americans, starting with the colonies; the novel opens with a true account of the so-called Indian Wars. An account of history that was rewritten to make us feel good about Thanksgiving. I loved it for… show more.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Orange’s novel is set in Indigenous Oakland and follows powwow dancers as they navigate identity, community, and loss. Widely praised for its articulation of today’s urban Indigenous experience, this work is fiction yet captures the realities that have emerged from longer histories.

Published in 2018, There There is the most recent book on this list. I read at a time when I was struggling to wrangle dozens of characters’ storylines into a novel that would have a sense of culmination. This book appeared in my life just when I needed it. Orange’s debut is a masterclass in the art of collision, as characters from one story begin to shape other storylines. Like all great climaxes, the one in There There is at once unforeseeable and inevitable.