“We are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feeling 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.”
“Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now.”
Tommy Orange’s debut novel, There There (Penguin Random House 2018) is a brilliant and raw novel of interwoven stories, all leading to the Big Oakland Powwow. You may remember the middle grade Ancestor Approved collection of intertribal stories with the powwow as the linking element; this is the much more adult version of that. Soaked and blood, tears, and alcohol, it drips with generational trauma, past and present assaults. It echoes with the screams of the dead, dying and lost. It gets under your skin, in your ear – the thrum of a drum in your heart as the sound of gunshots leaves your head ringing. You feel this novel. You taste this novel. You breathe this novel.
Dene is making a documentary of untold stories, continuing a project started by his now dead uncle. He intends to record stories at the powwow. Jacquie Red Feather, recently sober, is headed back to Oakland to claim her three grandsons from her sister, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield. Edwin, half-white, has just learned the indemnity of his father and starts an internship assisting with the powwow. Orvil Red Feather, one of Jacquie’s three grandsons, is planning to dance at the powwow – his longing for his heritage an unanswered cry within his family. Blue was adopted by a prominent white couple as a baby; she’s head of the powwow committee. Octavio is a local drug dealer; Tony, Calvin and Charles work for him. They intend to rob the powwow, which has advertised thousands of dollars in cash prizes.
The sections leading up to the powwow provide the strong and necessary character development that makes the powwow section, with its short bursts of stories, pierce the skin. I’m not going to delve into what happens, but trust me when I say you should read this. As for my favorite section, it’s likely Opal’s as a child during the Occupation of Alcatraz Island – in particular, her conversation with her teddy bear.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 