Rating:

“The city made us new, and we made it ours.”

Author: Tommy Orange

Starting off like a short story collection and then weaving together into something more, There There is a loose affiliation of 12 broken lives, spiraling together around a doomed event: the Big Oakland Powwow. Each character is connected in two ways: they are Native American, and they are either going to the powwow or somehow involved in it. For some, the powwow is a near mystical moment, evoking potential reconnection, whether that be with a person or with a culture. For some, it’s a means to an end: a chance to make money, a chance to find answers, or even a chance for redemption. For others, it’s part of a planned crime, one that quickly gets out of control.

There There is a big narrative with big dreams. It’s the story of the urban Indian, and as such, it’s got some weighty aspirations. This is not just a story that’s being told to keep you entertained, although Orange’s half sardonic, half melancholic prose does keep readers in an emotional chokehold, but a series of vignettes with a greater moral purpose. That is, of course, where the book both rises and falls.

At times, There, There drowns under the weight of all the stories it’s attempting to carry, all the things it is trying to say, and the many symbols each character is forced to portray, representing the tragedy, subjugation, and cultural misappropriation of the modern Indian. For instance, we have one character alone who represents the trauma of rape, adoption, addiction, suicide, forgiveness, and the aftermath of the failed Native occupation of Alcatraz during the 1970s. That’s a lot of burden for one character to bear through the story, and yet it’s not unusual in There, There. As such, the characters become more emblem of Native life and the potential difficulties and misunderstands than actual flesh and blood characters; while the chapters sing with near poetic emotion and depression, it becomes a bit much, keeping track of the various issues that are interplaying, one with another, through each moment of each character’s existence.

Image by Natasha G from Pixabay

Another literary red flag is the main cast of 12 characters. Eventually, these 12 people do become connected, some in obvious ways and others in very tenuous manners. There are also second and even tertiary characters. Each character has some serious stuff going on, much of it occurring in complicated layers. It was a mistake to listen to the audiobook for this one. I really needed the hold-it-in-your-hand copy and a printed character list to keep track of who-was-who and where they all fit in together, especially when it became obvious that There There was not a short story collection, but that the characters were recurring and the author intended to bring their actions together.

Overall, though, despite the confusion and way too much going on with way too many people in too few pages, There There has a strong, vibrant heart. There is a reason that Tommy Orange won an award, despite errors that would have been fatal in almost every other book. There is some insane magic here, between pen and paper, that leaves readers a little amazed and very thoughtful. The characters, even though they took on too many big-ticket issues, still sung, and the thoughts that were left when the final, blood-spattered pages rattled closed are not ones we can discount easily as “just fiction.” There is something here that makes it worth slowing down and spending time with this author and this work. Recommended, despite some of the more complicated elements that would normally have me running away.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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