During my final year of elementary school (or maybe it was my first year of middle school), we learned about Native Americans. I don't remember exactly what we were learning about, but I do remember scalping, how colonizers would hack off the tops of Native Americans' heads.
I remember one of my peers asking, "Would they even scalp women?" with something like awe in his voice.
And then I remember the instructor, who was standing behind me, lift up my long, dark ponytail and tug it slightly upward, for the whole class to see. "What do you think they'd rather have," he asked, "short hair, or something like this?"
I am not Native American, but that moment has stuck with me throughout the years. That tug, that dragging by the hair. All in the past tense, like Native Americans no longer exist, so neither does their pain.
But this isn't true. And Tommy Orange's debut novel There There (taking its title from the Gertrude Stein quote) contextualizes the struggles of urban Native Americans in today's world, aiming a wide but individualized lens at the different trials and communities within the Native American population.
Orange's cast of characters encompasses over 12 different voices, from young Orvil Red Feather, an aspiring powwow dancer, to Tony Loneman, a 21-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome, to Edwin Black, an obese mixed race man who never knew his Native father, and Octavio Gonzales, a local drug dealer.
The Big Oakland Powwow, the first powwow in Oakland, CA, draws all of them together. For some, the powwow means a celebration of Native culture, for others, a chance to explore the cultural history they never had, and for still others, an opportunity to make money.
Despite the confusion, self-medication, and ultimate violence experienced by all of the characters, there is redemption without pity, familial love, and the reach of shared pain across time.
This novel tackles so many subjects. Of course, it discusses the past and present of Native Americans. But it also looks at family, race and being biracial, the reason why drugs and alcohol are so prevalent, sexual abuse...the list is long but necessary for a clear picture.
Besides the conceptual content, Orange successfully deploys a variety of narratives and perspectives. Some characters use first person, while others use a narrator, and one claims second person point of view. But perhaps most importantly, the stories and characters resist being called pitiful. They are human and alive and violent and beautiful and sad, but not pitiful, not pitiable.
The array of characters allows you to empathize with the Native community as individuals, see the diversity of people and voices within this community that is so often conglomerated, stereotyped, and silenced.
The writing is lyric, but it's grounded with good, hard dialogue, too, a rare combination that's hard to achieve successfully. Its ending is both shattering and redemptive, it's one of those books that sticks to the back of your mind. Present tense.
9/10 📕