There There: A Novel
By: Tommy Orange / Narrated By: Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo, Kyla Garcia
Length: 8 hrs
Astonishing, just absolutely astonishing
I full well intended to dislike There There. I just purchased it cuz it was on sale, and hey, I’m like that. It’s been sitting on the digital shelf of my Kobo Library for some time now, but gosh the raves it’s gotten. Of COURSE now, the last week of Native American Heritage Month (Where we’ve done a few from Canada cuz the Americas are vast!), I thought perhaps it’d be good to finish off with something that was hailed as an Instant Classic.
But then, as I began listening (And I’d not read the Publisher’s Summary, mind you, as those can be soooo misleading!), I heard that a Powwow was coming up… oh noooooo, thought I! Because, you see, that’d make it the THIRD audiobook I’ve reviewed this month that featured a Powwow, and CERtainly that’s too stereotypical? And CERtainly, I was just about to hate this all, right?
But then! Oh. My. Gosh! Author Tommy Orange knocked my socks off with his writing style and with the introduction of the first of his characters. From that initial point to the mind-blowing conclusion?
Wow, just wow.
I really don’t know how to explain what it’s all about, as it seems to be a dozen or more characters, each one, young or quite old, struggling to be the new Urban Indian (And Orange makes it a point to say that it’s only those on the outside, the catered to, that say “Native American”— those who’ve never been challenged by what it is to live as the ultimate outsider in a land that once was there own). Edwin, one of the characters, is a Man-Boy, 30+ years old, living with his white mother and barely discovering that his real father, who he’s always known to be a Native, is an emcee for Powwows. I mention him as it’s he who babbles on about a short story he’s writing where one man invites another to his apartment and the guest stays and stays and invites others to stay and stay then tells the man he’d written an agreement signing off on everything then invites more over then pushes the man to a small cupboard at gunpoint. It’s all a whimsical story, but Edwin is in dead earnest about it. He’s trying to make sense, and he’s trying to find a sense of himself. And to me, a person who has to use “Native American” because I’m one of the Never Been Challenged? It was heartbreaking.
Add to that young Orvil Red Feather, who learns fancy dancing from YouTube videos, who sooo wants to know who he is as Indian and not just as some motherless kid from Oakland. Or a young man born with fetal alcohol syndrome, The Drome, which makes him even more of an outcast. Yeh yeh yeh, there are “universal” issues like alcoholism, and domestic violence, and broken families. But within this oh so extraordinarily well-written set of stories is plain and simple pain with a good dose of the divine. Anger, plus a willingness to Let Go when love is an option.
ALL the narrators were superb, tho’ I must fess up that it was Alma Cuervo, with her smoky voice, her emotional growl, that wound up as the star. Each of the characters was compelling (The “evil” have reasons they went down that path…), but Jacquie Red Feather wound up being stunning with her raw anger, the intensity of her desire to drink, the vulnerability of a broken soul who might, just might make her way back to where she belongs. Seriously fanTAStic narration!
My only complaint is that there are SO many characters, it was indeed a tad difficult to keep up with them all: Was Dene the one with the uncle who wanted to be a filmmaker? Or was he the one with the uncle who drove drunk and killed his sister and his nephew? And the end miiiiiight seem rushed, but it was something so dramatic, so painfully visceral, with just a smattering of nonsense and magic thrown in, that after mulling it over (And believe me: You WILL mull this inCREDible book over!), it seemed that it ended in the only way possible.
Tragic, yet beautifully wrought.
Seriously, a stunner.
Believe it when Tommy Orange is hyped as an Uber-gifted writer. And? Just read he’s writing a sequel.
2020 may’ve been a year to Hades and back, but 2022 is looking mighty grand with a proposed Release Date!
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