There There by Tommy OrangeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It takes a skilled writer to ferry his readers on a journey alongside not one but multiple narrators and protagonists. Tommy Orange performs the feat in a way that doesn't feel showy or take away from the importance of his subject matter. I went back and counted 11 separate chapter headings that had the names of the central character for each as their titles. There is also another, omniscient narrator who opens the book with a prologue, and provides an "interlude" halfway through.
The effect these multiple perspectives have is to remind the reader that we're looking not at a monolithic "Indian" prototype -- (the Indian Head that used to appear on the test pattern at the end of a television's programming day, back when there was an end) but of a diaspora. What's left in the wake of the genocide carried out on the native people of what's now called North America is a plurality of voices, experiences, and types.
All the characters in Tommy Orange's powerful debut are three-dimensional, and deeply scarred. We witness their struggles against addiction, poverty, and violence, and also toward family, belonging, and love.
If there's a "message" in this book, it's aimed at those who suggest that it's time to move on from the past and stop complaining about the crimes of those who no longer live among us. (Timely, in the face of recent comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell)
As Orange says in the interlude:
"When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone different. People want to say things like 'sore losers' and 'move on already,' 'quit playing the blame game.' But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say 'Get over it.' This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff."
Tommy Orange's "There There" stayed with me in a similar way that the film "Once Were Warriors," about contemporary life among the Maoris in New Zealand did. Yes, it's a tragic tale of the survivors of a Holocaust we rarely discuss, despite its foundational place in our nation's history. But it's also a journey with numerous characters who feel like real people that you might meet along the long road of your own quest for family and for love; for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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