There There

I have had this Advanced Reader Copy of There There for almost a year. I started it soon after I first got it, read a chapter, and put it down; I sensed this would be a powerful book, and I wasn't ready to read it yet. I got it back out this week when I realized that Tommy Orange was coming to Houston, and I read and read almost up to the time Orange walked onstage at Rice University in Houston. Last night I read to the end.

What do I think of this book? I feel the same way I did when I read The Things They Carried: sitting in deep admiration for the beauty of the writing and certain of the truth of the words, but, nevertheless, scarred by the reading. I know There There is full of real people—Dene with his storytelling grant inherited from his dead uncle; Tony left damaged by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; Jacquie raped during the Native American takeover of Alcatraz; and many more—and their stories are deeply real...there is no denying the reality of these stories. The book is afire with a searing blaze of anger directed out at those deemed to have sent these Native Americans into their circle of hell—suffering from poverty, racism, and alcoholism—and somehow, though I've never known a Native American in my life, my presumed status as a white person (whatever that is) makes me somehow liable for the pain. I feel marked by the suffering, the violence, the neediness, the fury of the characters, yet without a way to address it, relieve it, heal it.

I'm glad to have read this book; I hate that I read this book. This book tells the stories of Native Americans who have been silenced too long, and that is a good thing. I feel the pain of these characters; I am left with the pain.