Here is a voice we have never heard--a voice full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with stunning urgency and force. Here is a story of several people, each of whom has private reasons for travelling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honour his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and unspeakable loss. Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking, There There is a relentlessly paced multi-generational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. An unforgettable debut. Reviews: New York Times Bestseller A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book Longlist, National Book Award for Fiction “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.” —The New York Times "Masterful. White-hot. A devastating debut novel." —Washington Post “Each character is introduced and developed with a clear-eyed fidelity, empathic without sentimentality, our understanding increasing as connections are revealed, histories explored, gaps filled in. . . . At its core, There There is a novel about those gaps.” —Toronto Star “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
“A gripping deep dive into urban indigenous community in California: an astonishing literary debut!” —Margaret Atwood via Twitter
“There There drops on us like a thunderclap; the big, booming, explosive sound of twenty-first-century literature finally announcing itself. Essential.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
“There There is truly brilliant, a debut that is gritty, compassionate, and stylistically fierce. Tommy Orange has found language that bridges history and the raw heat of the now. You need to read this book.” —David Chariandy, author of Brother
“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
“Orange has crafted a stunning narrative that draws his characters together in a frenetic vortex of cultural reclamation, violence, loss, and hope. There There is crucial and mighty storytelling that firmly places itself in the canon of Indigenous literature for generations to come.” —Waubgeshig Rice, author of Legacy “A story of unforgettable characters, complex histories, and devastating transgressions. Tommy Orange is a brave new voice and There There is not just a glorious debut but a document of survival.” —Carleigh Baker, author of Bad Endings
“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.” —Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus 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. |