There There

There There

By Tommy Orange

A wondrous and shattering 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.

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.

Well, it ain't no YA.  I was kind of dreading this, a little, because even though I might be sore sick of YA, I still wasn't really in the mood for a polemic on social justice issues.  I'm worn out.  And there's something a bit voyeuristic about it.   There's a scene in there where Tony dresses up in his regalia and gets on BART to go to the Powwow and people are staring at him and he's thinking, basically, lap it up, sure, let's give the white people a fun story to tell about seeing a real Indian all dressed up.  I get a little bit of that same sense reading this. Basically peering in on someone else's life and making judgments on something I know very little about.  

But the book is generally strong and interesting to read.  Orange switches both POV and style, so we get some essays, but mostly chapters in a multitude of characters, most of whom are semi-loosely related in fashions that will become clearer as we get further into the book.  The finale centers around the Powwow, where everyone has gathered for their own reasons, ranging from initiation into a more Indian lifestyle, job/hobby, finding family, robbery, and the most fourth-wall reason, collecting stories from Indians to get a better sense of the modern "Urban Indian", as opposed to the historical, stereotypical reservation Indian.  One of my favorite scenes is Dene, the historiographer, talking with another character about the project and what it means to be Indian.  

But the book ends basically on a cliff-hanger, with no (at the time) intended resolution.  There's a way to do it that makes the story stronger, but in this case, I feel like it made everything else weaker, by not tying up at least a few of the loose ends.  We end one storyline literally with a boy's de facto grandmother beginning to look up at the doctor who is (we assume) going to tell her whether he lives or not.  Another is with a character bleeding out on the floor.  

These characters are teetering on revelations about family members, life and death, and we don't spend enough time with them during the book to really get a sense of how we can even assume or guess at how they'll handle it. Because we have so many characters, and this isn't a twelve book series, we're only with each character in small chunks.  Orange does a decent job with such a large cast, but I never entirely figured out who all was who in the criminal side of the book. 

I don't know; this one feels tough because yes, it feels completely unfinished, but also, I don't feel any impetus to get back in these people's lives. So I don't think I'd be up for a sequel, and that just kind of encapsulates my review: good, but not compelling.

10: An Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner