"There There" by Tommy Orange

This year, due to changes because of Covid-19, the school at which I teach has five lunch mods. 5th period--our lunch period--has always been longer than the other six bells to accommodate lunch, and this year it's even longer. Twenty minutes longer each day, to be exact. That means, over the course of a week, I have an hour and forty minutes more with 5th period than my other classes. I teach junior honors both 1st and 5th period, so this discrepancy became an issue. 

I came up with a novel (okay, easy) solution: we'd read in 5th period. I'd always wanted to do independent reading, but I couldn't figure out how to do it authentically in a school where student subterfuge is common. I checked out dozens of high-interest books from the library, and every day, for the last 15 minutes of class, my 5th period walks outside and reads by the baseball field.

I don't really know what my students think about it. They tell me it's "cool," but maybe they just sit there and daydream. I honestly don't care. Want to know what I do? Sit there, soak up the sunshine, and read for pleasure. It's my form of meditation. I'm dreading when it will be too cold to sojourn outside, but I'm taking it while I can.

Which is a needlessly long preamble to say I read There, There in 10- to 15-minute chunks over the course of six weeks or so. It's not an ideal way to read, and my apologies to Orange because I do think it did a disservice to his book, but I'll always remember it nonetheless. 

There There is a compilation of interwoven stories, all about "urban Indians"--that is, Native Americans living in the city, largely around Oakland. The characters in each of the stories weave into each other, all coming together at the end in a large powwow. The biggest downside of reading in small chunks was that I struggled to remember the characters' relationships to each other, especially because the connecting threads are often subtle.

That's a minor issue on my part, though, not a criticism of the book. I hadn't thought about it until I read There There, but I don't think I've ever read a book about modern Native American life that didn't take place on a reservation. Part of Orange's focus is that Native American identity and culture exist throughout America--not just on the reservation. He also considers what it means to be Native American today: some of the characters identify strongly with the label; others are barely aware it's part of their history. Regardless, the characters carry the history--and the baggage--of being Native American, which for many also means generational cycles of poverty and troubles with alcohol, drugs, or violence. 

Throughout the novel, there is a sense of dissonance, of disconnection--from identity, from family, from the outside world. None of the characters seem settled, at ease with where they are in the world, which is perhaps a reflection of America's long-standing tradition of uprooting Native Americans, of forcing them to an ambiguous place in our country.

In the increased focus on people of color this past spring, I realized how erased Native Americans have been. Other than a discussion of racist mascots, Indigenous' people's lives are rarely considered. There There is a glimpse of "urban Indian" life that few white Americans are familiar with, but it's also an unsentimental look at identity and our relationship to the past and present.