There There - Tommy Orange

There There

By Tommy Orange

  • Release Date: 2018-06-05
  • Genre: Literary Fiction
Score: 4
4
From 1,321 Ratings
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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).

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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.

Don't miss Tommy Orange's new book, Wandering Stars!

Reviews

  • There had better be a sequel there

    5
    By StrawberryFields4ever14
    This book is perfect, and my heart is in pieces. And there had better be a sequel PLEASE. That is all

  • Buried History

    3
    By Richard Bakare
    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

    5
    By Gladeola
    This novel has so many levels of reflection. It transformed my perception of American Indians and the complex, lasting effects of their persecution.

  • I'm Struggling to Understand

    1
    By One Over Astro
    I was assigned this book for a contemporary voices class on multiple perspectives narrating. While this book is very good at telling a story from multiple perspectives, that's pretty much the only thing it's good at. What I'm struggling to understand is Tommy Orange's thinking. To me, at least, it seems like he threw a bunch of ideas on paper, didn't connect any of them at all, and expected that to prove his point for some reason. The characters' stories in this book are also excessively negative. Like, seriously not a single good thing happens to the characters in this book. This is just unrealistic as, even though life can really be awful at times, it is never all bad and no good, just like how it is never all good and no bad. If we want to get the stories of urban Native Americans out there and heard, stop doing it through people who are this bad at writing. This novel just does a disservice to the community and infuriates me every time I read it. This is seriously one of the worst books I've ever read which is a shame because I have a lot of respect for Tommy Orange.

  • Fantastic broke my heart

    5
    By franc/s18
    The characters were so relatable I loved the imagery and historical context.

  • life-changing

    5
    By MJosephQ
    There There changed the way I think about Native Americans and the US in general. Just finished it and I don't want to leave it.

  • NOT YOUR AVERAGE LINEAR STORY

    3
    By kfgflynn
    Gotta give the author credits for his originality and ambition. He wrote a book about a virtually unexplored experience- contemporary urban Native American life- and did it from multiple (and I mean MULTIPLE) perspectives. But he bit off more than he could chew. The novel could have been just as stirring with 1/3 fewer words. No protagonist in this story, which isn’t necessarily a problem. But with regard to characters, the author chose quantity over quality: way too many characters, and none of them fully developed. This book took me months to “get through”, as opposed to “hours to devour”. Only in the final chapter was there anything close to an actual pacing. The author has a commanding, lyrical writing style. Flawed, but impressive and ambitious first novel.

  • There There

    5
    By gdub2019
    Fantastic read.

  • Stepping outside yourself

    4
    By Lyssa Kate
    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.

  • There There

    5
    By Befferly
    This novel blew me away! Once again i am astounded by the passionate creative release unfurled upon the earth by the power of words and the fresh voices of indigenous writers! They speak so truly and with such acceptance about unacceptable historical injustice, it is compellingly raising the consciousness of the sleeping white ancestors of colonization. Even more beautiful, this emerging cultural blossoming is offering a new mindset precisely equal to the task of saving the earth from the industrial revolution. I am feeling blessed by these voices!

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