By Aaron Golding, MSA Assistant Director
This week MSA is collaborating with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research and the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, and the American Indian Center of Chicago to host author Tommy Orange, who will discuss his book There There.
I read There There when it came out two summers ago. I’ve read a lot of books by Native authors. This book was a revelation. Books were a way to explore my identity and learn about Native people. I grew up without a connection to a Native community and so a lot of my references of Native Americans – aside from my mother, aunt, and uncle – came from the media, which usually does a poor job of representing Natives. This changed for me when I saw Smoke Signals and read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. That movie, and the short story collection it was based on, opened up a new world for me of Native stories authored by Native People. (I was and still am disheartened by the allegations of sexual harassment against Sherman Alexie).
However, while I loved reading stories by Native authors, I didn’t see myself reflected in them. Many stories use the reservation as the center of Native community and culture. Some are set in the city, but end up being a cautionary tale of what happens when you step away from your community. They usually end up with the protagonist returning to reservation to reclaim their indigeneity and get back to their roots.
I read so many stories with similar themes that when I was in grad school studying fiction writing – as the only Native person in the entire department – I thought my fiction needed to have elements of this trope in order to be “authentic.” My experiences with peers and faculty alike reinforced this expectation. There were comments that my characters should have last names with animals or colors or numbers or arrows from multiple professors. And when I resisted that pressure and gave one of my characters a French last name, it raised concerns. Why a French name? Why not a French last name? The French colonized these lands too. I couldn’t help but hear the coded language that was questioning the authenticity of my decision. More importantly, I wonder if that professor was really trying to say that white readers would accept that name as Indian. Orange has a brilliant section in his book that talks about names and pushes against the kind of colonial thinking I was navigating.
There There opened up so many possibilities for Native representation. It is set in Oakland, California, and is explicit that urban landscapes are Native landscapes. It demonstrates that Urban Indians are real Indians whatever that means. It reminds us that community, family, and commitment to place is as vitally important to Urban Natives as it is to Reservation Natives. It taught all of us what Urban Natives have known all along: that home and homelands aren’t just reservations. It kicked down barriers and opened a multitude of possibilities for new storytellers. Orange has furthered a path that was carved by the generations of writers that have come before. While I now live in an Urban Native community, I didn’t grow up in one, so there’s aspects of Orange’s book that I don’t claim. But the struggles his characters go through, were completely relatable to my life. I saw myself reflected in this book in a way that I had never seen myself reflected. And that was powerful and uplifting and a little sad.
If you haven’t read There There, I highly recommend it. And if you can make it out on Thursday, please do so. I think it’ll be a great conversation. Register for the event at bit.ly/CNAIR_ORANGE