Book review: There There

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What comes to mind when you think about Native Americans? If you’re currently thinking about cliché-riddled men in feathers dancing around a campfire or silently standing behind problematic white Hollywood actors, you might want to consider picking up a copy of this book.

In “There There”, author Tommy Orange introduces us to an eclectic ensemble of characters whose relationship to being Indian (this is the predominant term used in the book, which is why I am using it here as well) varies quite significantly.

They are young, old, alcoholic, violent, depressed, abused, lost, in love, constipated, shrewd, joyful, and poor. In short, they are Natives as they exist in today’s world, with all of the damage that centuries of colonialism inflicted on their nations.

While juggling such a huge number of characters can sometimes go awry, Orange cleverly solves this problem by having all of the storylines lead up to a big final event: The Great Oakland Powwow. The plot is quite action-packed throughout, but really kicks up another notch towards the end.

All of the characters are broken in some way, but Orange crucially doesn’t victimise them. He describes their own personal shortcomings, their moments of selfishness, in candid detail. He humanises them while still setting the overall story in a world that is unequivocally defined by the brutal foundation of a settler-colony that to this day continues to try its hardest to erase the traces of its genocidal history and nature.

The question of Indian identity is central to this novel and examined from a multitude of angles. One character, Thomas Frank, has a white mother and a “one-thousand-percent” Indian father. A scene that has particularly stuck with me sees Frank reflecting upon his body in the bathtub: “you’d stare at your brown arms against your white legs in the water and wonder what they were doing together on the same body, in the same bathtub.”

“There There” pulled off that magical balancing act of triggering my curiosity and making me want to seek out materials to educate myself more while also entertaining me splendidly with an exciting plot that will not leave you unfazed.