Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$13.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$14.40

Paperback
$8.70

$14.40 with 52 percent savings

List Price: $30.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, May 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Friday, May 10. Order within 14 hrs 47 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$14.40 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$12.74

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

***EX-LIBRARY BOOK***: USED-GOOD: All pages and cover are intact (including the dust cover, if applicable). Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. This book is from a LIBRARY and may contain library labels and/or markings. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Item may be missing bundled media. ***EX-LIBRARY BOOK***: USED-GOOD: All pages and cover are intact (including the dust cover, if applicable). Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. This book is from a LIBRARY and may contain library labels and/or markings. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Item may be missing bundled media. See less

FREE delivery May 23 - June 3 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery May 22 - 30

Select delivery location

$$14.40 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Friends of the Libraries and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (129) from $6.31 & FREE Shipping

Follow the author

Tommy Orange

+ Follow

More books from this author

Books That I Couldn't Put Down

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

VIDEO

There There: A novel Hardcover – June 5, 2018

by Tommy Orange (Author)

4.3 16,403 ratings

Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$14.40","priceAmount":14.40,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"14","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"40","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"s5KDTx1K4uBQ9IJ1QXzY0oWRR6n%2BVRvwD3Sc9EVEf0iK3hMMf6ToNnaYmlaHiUFbAn0yghyXE4LHutdaYALFmXImaA6ic8uER3iW%2BKTTBMn23hbt5VaDfVx%2FwrzUeTC07S3OJeTfnXfLggK5nqTRag%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$12.74","priceAmount":12.74,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"74","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"s5KDTx1K4uBQ9IJ1QXzY0oWRR6n%2BVRvw2ltIyQo%2BXrPzjl%2BT83LUOBeC8%2FpkFQLunozAHtA9SRHWFFukKHp%2BbZ9HfMamqCVSTdhsFDXHRGx9JCrB5SLwtkYJf0AQsevR16OSdCuyySUkHri2rZGlvc01ZPkwZv0ewCb9bu2GC8B7f%2BpdYNOmbw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

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!

Frequently bought together

$14.40

Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$19.16

Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$18.41

Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Tommy Orange
802
Hardcover
74 offers from $13.78
Cherie Dimaline
3,260
Paperback
97 offers from $2.19
LeAnne Howe
616
Paperback
96 offers from $4.23
Morgan Talty
831
Paperback
84 offers from $5.34
Leslie Marmon Silko
1,861
Paperback
160 offers from $1.89
Louise Erdrich
928
Paperback
155 offers from $1.92

Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.
Highlighted by 6,318 Kindle readers
Does what we try most to avoid come after us because we paid too much attention to it with our worry?
Highlighted by 5,438 Kindle readers
“There There,” by Radiohead. The hook is “Just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.”
Highlighted by 4,875 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of June 2018: What does it really mean to be an Indian/Native American/American Indian/Native? Orange's vivid debut novel allows a unique cast—ranging from teenagers to elders—to pull this question apart even as they add a modern layer of complexity: They live in the urban landscape of Oakland, California. The thrust of Orange's cross-cut storytelling is not to force his characters onto a strict plot line but to explore the varied ways of being an Indian and, more important, of feeling like an Indian. Fractured families, Oakland itself, and detachment from tradition make an Indian identity seem even more elusive to the younger characters, but it's a feeling that they unknowingly share—and that Orange wants to expose. As an amateur filmmaker says to a teen he's interviewing, "When you hear stories from people like you, you feel less alone." Isolation and longing permeate the page, lifted briefly only as the characters intersect at the Big Oakland Powwow, with chaotic results. If I have any quibble about the book (and it could be a failure of mine, really), it's that there are a few too many characters for me to comfortably hold in my head. But then again, this isn't a comfortable novel, and therein lies its power and purpose. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review

Review

“Bravura… There There has so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation… its appearance marks the passing of a generational baton.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Sweeping and subtle…pure soaring beauty.”
—Colm Toibin, The New York Times

“A rush of intensity and fervor… Bursting with talent and big ideas… Funny and profane and conscious of the violence that runs like a scar through American culture.”
—Jeff Baker, The Seattle Times

"A new kind of American epic... one that reflects his ambivalence and the complexity of [Orange's] upbringing."
—Alexandra Alter, The New York Times

"Masterful. White-hot. A devastating debut novel."
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"A gripping deep dive into urban indigenous community in California: an astonishing literary debut!"
—Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

“Welcome to a brilliant and generous artist who has already enlarged the landscape of American Fiction. THERE THERE is a comic vision haunted by profound sadness. Tommy Orange is a new writer with an old heart.”
—Louise Erdrich, Birchbark Books

“THERE THERE drops on us like a thunderclap; the big, booming, explosive sound of 21st century literature finally announcing itself. Essential.”
—Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

“There There is a miraculous achievement, a book that wields ferocious honesty and originality in service of telling a story that needs to be told. This is a novel about what it means to inhabit a land both yours and stolen from you, to simultaneously contend with the weight of belonging and unbelonging. There is an organic power to this book – a revelatory, controlled chaos. Tommy Orange writes the way a storm makes landfall.”
—Omar El Akkad, author of American War

“There There is an urgent, invigorating, absolutely vital book by a novelist with more raw virtuosic talent than any young writer I've come across in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Tommy Orange is a stylist with substance, a showboater with a deeply moral compass. I want to call him heir to Gertrude Stein by way of George Saunders, but he is even more original than that. This book will make your heart swell.”
—Claire Vaye Watkins

"This is Tommy Orange. Remember his name. His book's gonna blow the roof off."
—Pam Houston

"A symphonic debut...Engrossing... There There introduces an exciting voice."
—Booklist (starred review)

"Commanding...The propulsion of both the overall narrative and its players are breathtaking as Orange unpacks how decisions of the past mold the present, resulting in a haunting and gripping story."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Visceral... A chronicle of domestic violence, alcoholism, addiction, and pain, the book reveals the perseverance and spirit of the characters... Unflinching candor... Highly recommended."
—Library Journal (starred review)

"Kaleidoscopic... In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

TOMMY ORANGE is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
―Bertolt Brecht

Indian Head

There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long haired, Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out. It’s called the Indian Head Test Pattern. If you left the TV on, you’d hear a tone at 440 hertz—the tone used to tune instruments—and you’d see that Indian, surrounded by circles that looked like sights through rifle scopes. There was what looked like a bullseye in the middle of the screen, with numbers like coordinates. The Indian head was just above the bullseye, like all you’d need to do was nod up in agreement to set the sights on the target. This was just a test.

In 1621, colonists invited Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags, to a feast after a recent land deal. Massasoit came with ninety of his men. That meal is why we still eat a meal together in November. Celebrate it as a nation. But that one wasn’t a thanksgiving meal. It was a land deal meal. Two years later there was another, similar meal, meant to symbolize eternal friendship. Two hundred Indians dropped dead that night from supposed unknown poison.

By the time Massasoit’s son Metacomet became chief, there were no Indian-Pilgrim meals being eaten together. Metacomet, also known as King Phillip, was forced to sign a peace treaty to give up all Indian guns. Three of his men were hanged. His brother Wamsutta was let’s say very likely poisoned after being summoned and seized by the Plymouth court. All of which lead to the first official Indian war. The first war with Indians. King Phillip’s War. Three years later the war was over and Metacomet was on the run. He was caught by Benjamin Church, Captain of the very first American Ranger force and an Indian by the name of John Alderman. Metacomet was beheaded and dismembered. Quartered. They tied his four body sections to nearby trees for the birds to pluck. John Alderman was given Metacomet’s hand, which he kept in a jar of rum and for years took it around with him—charged people to see it. Metacomet’s head was sold to the Plymouth Colony for thirty shillings—the going rate for an Indian head at the time. The head was spiked and carried through the streets of Plymouth before it was put on display at Plymouth Colony Fort for the next twenty five years.

In 1637, anywhere from four to seven hundred Pequot were gathered for their annual green corn dance. Colonists surrounded the Pequot village, set it on fire, and shot any Pequot who tried to escape. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a feast in celebration, and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. Thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were, what we have to call: successful massacres. At one such celebration in Manhattan, people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls.

The first novel ever written by a Native person, and the first novel written in California, was written in 1854, by a Cherokee guy named John Rollin Ridge. His novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, was based on a supposed real-life Mexican bandit from California by the same name, who, in 1853, was killed by a group of Texas rangers. To prove they’d killed Murrieta and collect the five thousand dollar reward put on his head—they cut it off. Kept it in a jar of whiskey. They also took the hand of his fellow bandit Three Fingered Jack. The rangers took Joaquin’s head and the hand on a tour throughout California, charged a dollar for the show.

The Indian head in the jar, the Indian head on a pike were like flags flown, to be seen, cast broadly. Just like the Indian head test pattern was broadcast to sleeping Americans as we set sail from our living rooms, over the ocean blue green glowing airwaves, to the shores, the screens of the new world.

Rolling Head

There’s an old Cheyenne story about a rolling head. We heard it said there was a family who moved away from their camp, moved near a lake—husband, wife, daughter, son. In the morning when the husband finished dancing, he would brush his wife’s hair and paint her face red, then go off to hunt. When he came back her face would be clean. After this happened a few times he decided to follow her and hide, see what she did while he was gone. He found her in the lake, with a water monster, some kind of snake thing, wrapped around her in an embrace. The man cut the monster up and killed his wife. He brought the meat home to his son and daughter. They noticed it tasted different. The son who was still nursing said, my mother tastes just like this. His older sister told him it’s just deer meat. While they ate a head rolled in. They ran and the head followed them. The sister remembered where they played, how thick the thorns were there, and she brought the thorns to life behind them with her words. But the head broke through, kept coming. Then she remembered where rocks used to be piled in a difficult way. The rocks appeared when she spoke of them, but didn’t stop the head, so she drew a hard line in the ground which made a deep chasm the head couldn’t cross. But after a long heavy rain, the chasm filled with water. The head crossed the water, and when it reached the other side, it turned around and drank all that water up. The rolling head became confused and drunk. It wanted more. More of anything. More of everything. And it just kept rolling.

One thing we should keep in mind, moving forward, is that no one ever rolled heads down temple stairs. Mel Gibson made that up. But we do have, those of us who saw the movie, in our minds the rolling heads down temple stairs in a world meant to resemble the real Indian world in the 1500s in ancient Mexico. Mexicans before they were Mexicans. Before Spain came.

We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and current state as a people. We have the sad, defeated Indian silhouette, and the rolling heads down temple stairs, we have it in our heads, Kevin Costner saving us, John Wayne’s six-shooter slaying us, an Italian guy named Iron Eyes Cody playing our parts in movies. We have the litter-mourning, tear-ridden Indian in the commercial (also Iron Eyes Cody), and the sink-tossing, Jack Nicholson saving, crazy Indian who was the narrator in the novel, the voice of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We have all the logos and mascots. The copy of a copy of the image of an Indian in a textbook. All the way from the top of Canada, the top of Alaska, down to the bottom of South America, Indians were removed then reduced to a feathered image. Our heads are on flags, jerseys, and coins. Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian head cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people—which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, is now out of circulation.

Massacre as Prologue

Some of us grew up with stories about massacres. Stories about what happened to our people not so long ago. How we came out of it. At Sand Creek, we heard it said that they mowed us down with their howitzers. Volunteer militia under Colonel John Chivington came to kill us, we were mostly women, children, and elders. The men were away to hunt. They’d told us to fly the American flag. We flew that and a white flag too. Surrender, the white flag waved. We stood under both flags as they came at us. They did more than kill us. They tore us up. Mutilated us. Broke our fingers to take our rings, cut off our ears to take our silver, scalped us for our hair. We hid in the hollows of tree trunks, buried ourselves in sand by the riverbank. That same sand ran red with blood. They tore unborn babies out of bellies, took what we intended to be, our children before they were children, babies before they were babies, they ripped them out of our bellies. They broke soft baby heads against trees. Then they took our body parts as trophies and displayed them on stage in a downtown Denver. Colonel Chivington danced with dismembered parts of us in his hands, with women’s pubic hair, drunk, he danced, and the crowd gathered there before him were all the worse for cheering and laughing along with him. It was a celebration.

Hard, Fast

Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, completion of a five hundred year old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours. We didn’t get lost amidst the sprawl of tall buildings, the stream of anonymous masses, the ceaseless din of traffic. We found each other, started up Indian Centers, brought out our families and powwows, our dances, our songs, our beadwork. We bought and rented homes, slept on the streets, under freeways, we went to school, joined the armed forces, populated Indian bars in the Fruitvale in Oakland, and in the Mission in San Francisco. We lived in boxcar villages in Richmond. We made art and we made babies and we made way for our people to go back and forth between reservation and city. We did not move to cities to die. The sidewalks and streets, the concrete absorbed our heaviness. The glass, metal, rubber and wires, the speed, the hurtling masses—the city took us in. We were not Urban Indians then. This was part of the Indian Relocation Act, which was part of the Indian Termination Policy, which was and is exactly what it sounds like. Make them look and act like us. Become us. And so disappear. But it wasn’t just like that. Plenty of us came by choice, to start over, to make money, or just for a new experience. Some of us came to cities to escape the reservation. We stayed after fighting in the second world war. After Vietnam too. We stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can’t leave a war once you’ve been, you can only keep it at bay—which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets. The quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced.

Plenty of us are urban now. If not because we live in cities than because we live on the internet. Inside the high rise of multiple browser windows. They used to call us sidewalk Indians. Called us citified, superficial, inauthentic, cultureless refugees, apples. An apple is red on the outside and white on the inside. But what we are is what our ancestors did. How they survived. We are the memories we don’t remember, that live in us, that we feel, that make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood through a blanket from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us.

When they first came for us with their bullets, we didn’t stop moving even though the bullets moved twice as fast as the sound of our screams, and even when their heat and speed broke our skin, shattered our bones, skulls, pierced our hearts, we kept on, even when we saw the bullets send our bodies flailing through the air like flags, like the many flags and buildings that went up in place of everything we knew this land to be before. The bullets were premonitions, ghosts from dreams of a hard fast future. The bullets moved on after moving through us, became the promise of what was to come, the speed and the killing, the hard fast lines of borders and buildings. They took everything and ground it down to dust as fine as gunpowder, they fired their guns into the air in victory and the strays flew out into the nothingness of histories written wrong and meant to be forgotten. Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now.

Urbanity

Urban Indians were that generation born in the city. We’ve been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. An Urban Indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. Everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth. All our relations. The process that brings anything to its current form, chemical, synthetic, technological or otherwise doesn’t make the product not a product of the living earth. Buildings, freeways, cars—are these not of the earth? Were they shipped in from Mars, the moon? Is it because they’re processed, manufactured, or that we handle them? Are we so different? Were we at one time not something else entirely, homosapiens, single celled organisms, space dust, unidentifiable pre-bang quantum theory? Cities form in the same way as galaxies. Urban Indians feel at home walking in the shadow of a downtown building. We came to know the downtown Oakland skyline better than we did any sacred mountain range, the redwoods in the Oakland hills better than any other deep wild forest. We know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete, the smell of burnt rubber, better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even frybread—which isn’t traditional, like reservations aren’t traditional, but nothing is original, everything comes from something before, which was once nothing. Everything is new and doomed. We ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; First Edition (June 5, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525520376
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525520375
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ HL810L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.72 x 1.16 x 8.54 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #30,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Native American Literature (Books)
- #175 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #2,822 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 16,403 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Tommy Orange

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

TOMMY ORANGE is faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

16,403 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

AnitaPeron

Powerful, innovative, and captivating

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

I heard an interview with Tommy Orange and he was so thoughtful and intelligent... he had a deeply human way of talking about things and making connections that welcomed the listener into the conversation.

The minute I got home, I bought There There and dove into the world he had captured and the people he created to bring that world to life. It’s a phenomenal book. On top of a riveting story and characters that you invest in deeply, the story itself is so well-constructed, so intimately and carefully layered, that when you get to the end, you know you have just experienced a true work of art.

I recently went to a arts conference up at Western Washington University in Bellingham and an elder from the Lummi Nation was speaking about language and placenames. I have always considered myself a local. I was born here. I am invested in this town and in the surrounding land. It means something to me, very dear and very real. But listening to him, it dawned on me (duh) that I am a colonist. Maybe an accidental colonist, but still. When I’ve talked to others about it, I’ve been met with hostility and racism and ignorance. People denigrating and undermining what the Lummi people went through, minimizing their value so as to make it okay that we non-Natives are here and the reservation is small. Finally, I could hear it for myself. The language and reasoning of colonization - the mindset of takers who don’t want to feel bad for taking. We were raised in a community that looks down on the people who actually belong here... which is such a sick and backward and unhealthy way to think and act. It’s been strange to see myself that way, as a colonist. But once I realized that we’re no different than the Boers of South Africa or the non-natives of New Zealand and Australia and Hawaii and Fiji and... I mean... this is a bloody and unhealthy legacy.

And then this book comes at that issue from the other side. I needed to hear this. I needed to read this. And I think we need to reorganize how we teach history and culture. Not once did I learn anything about the Lummi Nation in school. Not once did a teacher explain to me that Whatcom - the name of our lake and creek - meant “the sound of water going over stones.” I would’ve liked to have known those things. I think it would’ve connected me in a deeper way to the place where I live, but also it would’ve given every single kid in that classroom the message that the people who were here first are important, are still here, and are a key part of our history. Instead, we learned about the colonists. The loggers and mill owners. The early settlers. And the message was clear, even by third grade: We were the winners. They were the losers. And that’s a messed up message to send. But you can hear it in the way people talk in my town. They don’t see the Lummi Nation as survivors, as people who maintained their culture and their language and who thrived against all odds. They don’t see themselves as the beneficiaries of their colonist ancestors. They live in a fantasy. And, from what I can tell, when you’re living in a fantasy, you can’t accurately solve things in the real world.

I think this book will help wake people up. Natives and non-Natives alike. It’s also a fantastic book and stands on its own merit as an amazing piece of writing.

54 people found this helpful

Helpful

Camila Russell

Powerful

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2024

Verified Purchase

There There is a literary fiction novel written by an Indigenous author. Tommy Orange is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. This book is set in Oakland, California, where the author grew up. As many Indigenous people, Orange grew up off-reservation.

At the prologue, the author lays the foundation to the historical violence and massacre of the Indigenous people - I think the prologue was the best part of this book. In this story we follow twelve different perspectives told by twelve different characters. It discusses the struggles of modern Indians in contemporary society. The reader doesn’t realize at the beginning of the book but the lives of these characters are intertwined by an event that will happen at the end of the story.

The author points out the loss of Native American culture to colonialism and also writes about a variety of themes such as family, death, poverty, ceremony, tradition, addiction, abuse, suicide, and memory. This novel is powerful, insightful, and I believe any book that is able to educate its readers is a book worth reading.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

#EmptyNestReader

Excellent You will never look at Thanksgiving the same way

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023

Verified Purchase

“Silence is not just silence but is not speaking up.”
There, There is a beautifully written, captivating story of present-day Native Americans living in Oakland, CA. Urban Indians are that generation born in the city. "We’ve been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. An Urban Indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. Everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing…” "Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, completion of a five hundred year old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours.“

The book follows the lives of 12 characters and explores what it means to be an Indian or, perhaps more importantly, feel like an Indian. A formidable look at the life of Native Americans a people affected by dislocation, disjointed identities, fractured families, misinformation, abuse, denial and prejudice yet sustained by culture, tradition and hope.
The story line and the characters are eventually drawn into one story when the characters all attend the Big Oakland Powwow. "Here history is celebrated, history is confronted and grieving is renewed." “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together. Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work toward, for our jewelry, our songs, our dances, our drum.”

This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ book.even though I found it frustrating to read in places as there's a lot going on and keeping the stories of all 12 characters straight was a challenge. I read the book on audio and think that it may have been less confusing to have read a paper copy.

I’ll leave you with this one, unnerving, quote: “This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff.

You will never look at Thanksgiving the same way again. *****

26 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Comfy pyjamas

I would love to get this book

Reviewed in Canada on March 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

This book seems interesting to read

Daniel from Norwich

Held my full attention

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2023

Verified Purchase

At the Big Oakland Powwow, there’s $50,000 of prize money and a plot to steal it. ‘There There’ tells the story of the robbery and why a handful of the Urban Native American attendees come to the event.

Jacquie Red Feather travels from Phoenix with event emcee, Harvey, a man she hasn’t seen since he raped her forty-two years ago. A daughter was conceived during the rape and was given away for adoption when Jacquie was seventeen. The daughter, Blue, is head of the powwow committee.

Jacquie had a second daughter, Jamie, a heroin addict who killed herself, leaving three sons. Jacquie’s younger half-sister, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, adopted Jacquie’s grandsons. Orvil (14) likes to dance in traditional Indian regalia. He takes his brothers, Loother (12) and Lony (10), to the powwow where he enters a dance competition. Opal goes to the powwow in secret to watch Orvil dance.

Like Jacquie, Harvey is an alcoholic. He unwittingly fathered another child during a wild night with a white woman called Karen. The child, Edwin Black, was raised by Karen. Edwin is tech-savvy and holds a master’s degree in comparative literature. He successfully applies for a paid internship at the Oakland Indian Centre, which requires him to help organise the powwow. Karen’s boyfriend, Bill Davis, works in maintenance at the Oakland Coliseum – location of the Big Oakland Powwow.

In her youth, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield was in a relationship with Lucas who moved in with his sister, Norma, when he was dying of alcohol induced liver failure. Norma has a mixed-race son, Dene Oxendene, who, at the age of thirteen, inherited a camera from Lucas. Dene gets a $5,000 grant to document urban Indian stories and sets up a tent at the Big Oakland Powwow.

Blue used to work with Maggie, sister of Calvin and Charles Johnson. Calvin lives with Maggie and her daughter Sonny. Blue gets Calvin a job finding younger vendors and supporting young Native artists and entrepreneurs at the powwow. Charles, his best friend Carlos and Calvin all sell weed for Octavio Gomez. Calvin is robbed of a consignment of weed he was supposed to sell. Charles and Carlos smoke theirs. All three are now in debt to Octavio.

Octavio’s father died in a shooting avenging the theft of weed by Octavio’s brother, Junior, and uncle, Sixto. Octavio’s mother and brother were killed in a car accident when they were passengers in a drunk Sixto’s car. Octavio moved in with his grandmother, Josefina.

Manny and Daniel Gonzales were cousins of Octavio. Their father was thrown out of the house following an attack on their mother, Sylvia. Manny was killed in a revenge shooting, leaving a young Daniel to support his mother. Daniel makes guns on a 3D printer. Octavio buys six guns for $5,000. Daniel gives $3,000 to Sylvia and spends the balance on a drone and VR glasses.

Tony Loneman has foetal alcohol syndrome. His dad doesn’t know he exists and his mother is in jail. He lives with and cares for his grandmother, Maxine. He supports her with the proceeds of selling weed and cocaine for Octavio.

Octavio persuades Tony, Calvin, Charles and Carlos to rob the powwow with him, using the 3D guns printed by Daniel. Octavio forbids his cousin Daniel to attend the powwow, but says he can use the drone to watch the robbery. In full Native regalia, Tony smuggles bullets into the powwow. An amazing climax to a gripping tale follows.

Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Particularly in the epilogue and interlude, he outlines the shameful genocide and displacement of Native people.

The story is told with sometimes shocking honesty and a clutch of fascinating, distinct voices. I feel the large cast of characters is handled well and the failure to resolve every issue by the end of the novel is necessary. Despite the clear search for identity and the challenges facing Native people, no solution is offered. Life rarely serves up a neat, happy ending.

I enjoyed the dark humour: ‘He’s always feared he’ll find out that he’s smelled like piss and shit his whole life without knowing it, that everyone’s been afraid to tell him, like Kevin Farley from the fifth grade who ended up killing himself the summer of their junior year in high school when he found out.’

When you begin to wonder whether every Native person abuses alcohol, Harvey says: ‘There’s not some special relationship between Indians and alcohol. It’s just what’s cheap, available, legal. It’s what we have to go to when it seems like we have nothing else left.’

And probably my favourite quote from the book: ‘We don’t have time, Nephew, time has us. It holds us in its mouth like an owl holds a field mouse. We shiver. We struggle for release, and then it pecks out our eyes and intestines for sustenance and we die the death of field mice.’

One person found this helpful

Waïza

Intéressant

Reviewed in France on April 6, 2023

Verified Purchase

Étant en licence d'anglais, je devais le lire. Très bon livre

Translate review to English

Cliente Kindle

Interconnectedness

Reviewed in Italy on September 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

I really love the interconnectedness among the stories and the tension, the feeling of await and desperation throughout the stories.

Vivek Tejuja

Marvellous and soul-stirring.

Reviewed in India on January 8, 2021

Verified Purchase

There’s so much happening in There There, but not once did it feel overwhelming or confusing. I could understand each character, their motivations, and the plot as well, right till the end when it all unravels. Actually., it starts unravelling quite early on. As early on as the third chapter or so.

There There (title referring to a quote by Gertrude Stein, which is out of context, but works here) by Tommy Orange is not only important because of the socio-political issues it raises or the ones that are deep-rooted in the novel. It is also important because it is written so well and needs to be read widely. There are 12 characters whose lives are interwoven. They are all Native Americans, living or have lived in Oakland, California. They are all dealing with identity issues, and want to make more sense of their lives, and do better at living. And all their stories and lives converge and meet at the Big Oakland Powwow.

It is a Canterbury Tales like novel, with each narrative unfolding, and un-layering till we get to the end. At the heart of it though it is about Native Americans and their lives – their stories, the injustices, the motivations, the histories deep buried and sometimes unacknowledged, the need to fit in so strongly because that’s what’s been drummed into your head, and about the marginalized and the invisible lives they lead.

Each chapter is of course focused on one character, and yet it never feels disjointed or separate. It all magnificently comes together in the manner of how families are formed – sometimes by birth, and sometimes just. Dene Oxedene’s track in the book is pretty much what the book is about – he is making a documentary on the lives of Native Americans, as they speak about their experiences of living in Oakland.

Tommy Orange’s writing is direct and cuts to the bone. He shows and tells. He does it all. He is a traditional storyteller, and also breaks form multiple times in the course of the book. Yes, sometimes it can get overwhelming to follow lives of 12 people, but it is a ride you want to be on gladly, and understand, comprehend, and make sense of the world we live in.

“The messy, dangling strands of our lives got pulled into a braid—tied to the back of everything we’ve been doing all along to get us here…we’ve been coming for years, generations, lifetimes, layered in prayer and hand-woven regalia, beaded and sewn together, feathered, braided, blessed, and cursed.”

Do you need to say anything more with this imagery on paper? All I can say is that read this book. Read it with an open mind and heart. I am eagerly looking forward to Tommy Orange’s next.

2 people found this helpful

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Return this item for free

Follow the author

Image Unavailable