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There There by Tommy Orange

There There

by Tommy Orange

2020/2021

Open Books--Open Minds common book

“With a literary authority rare in a debut novel, it places Native American voices front and center before readers’ eyes.” —NPR/Fresh Air

“Mr. Orange’s sparkling debut is not merely a literary triumph but a cultural and political one, too. It is a work of defiance and recovery.” —The Economist

“Orange’s book is truly a page turner filled with multi-generational accounts of violence, recovery, memory, identity, beauty, and even a little despair. It’s a book where you as the reader can’t put down until you finish it with both a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of anticipation of what could happen next.” —Lakota Country Times

From the publisher:

"Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering novel 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. 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. 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 unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable."

Character Relationship Map

This map of relationships between characters in There There was created by Dr. Sue Abbotson, Professor in Department of English at RIC.

Selected Reviews

Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo. "There There by Tommy Orange Review--Native American Stories." The Guardian, 18 Jul 2018.
"A sorrowful, beautiful debut novel follows a group of young “Urban Indians” struggling to make sense of their identity"
Corrigan, Maureen. "Pithy and Pointed There There Puts Native American Voices Front and Center." Fresh Air, National Public Radio, 18 Jun 2018.
"There There is distinguished not only by Orange's crackling style, but by its unusual subject. This is a novel about urban Indians, about native peoples who know, as he says, 'the sound of the freeway better than [they] do rivers ... the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than [they] do the smell of cedar or sage...'"
Toibin, Colm. "Yes, Tommy Orange's New Novel Really Is that Good." The New York Times, 19 Jun 2018.
"In Tommy Orange’s There There, an ambitious meditation on identity and its broken alternatives, on myth filtered through the lens of time and poverty and urban life, on tradition all the more pressing because of its fragility, it is as if he seeks to reconfigure Oakland as a locus of desire and dreams, to remake the city in the likeness of his large and fascinating set of characters."

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Open Books Open Minds - There There by Tommy Orange

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There There by Tommy Orange

There There

Character Relationship Map

Selected Reviews