Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes Tommy Orange for a reading and signing of his highly-anticipated debut novel, There There. Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking—Tommy Orange’s first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. Not since Louise Erdrich has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. This event is the launch event of Bookshop's Debuts of Summer series.
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle's memory. Edwin Black has come to find his true father. Thomas Frank has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions--intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path. Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking--Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multigenerational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. A glorious, unforgettable debut.
“A gripping deep dive into urban indigenous community in California: an astonishing literary debut!” —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
“Welcome to a brilliant and generous artist who has already enlarged the landscape of American Fiction. THERE THERE is a comic vision haunted by profound sadness. Tommy Orange is a new writer with an old heart.” —Louise Erdrich
“THERE THERE drops on us like a thunderclap; the big, booming, explosive sound of 21st century literature finally announcing itself. Essential.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
“This is Tommy Orange. Remember his name. His book’s gonna blow the roof off.” —Pam Houston
“There There is a miraculous achievement, a book that wields ferocious honesty and originality in service of telling a story that needs to be told. This is a novel about what it means to inhabit a land both yours and stolen from you, to simultaneously contend with the weight of belonging and unbelonging. There is an organic power to this book – a revelatory, controlled chaos. Tommy Orange writes the way a storm makes landfall.” —Omar El Akkad, author of American War
“There There is an urgent, invigorating, absolutely vital book by a novelist with more raw virtuosic talent than any young writer I’ve come across in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Tommy Orange is a stylist with substance, a showboater with a deeply moral compass. I want to call him heir to Gertrude Stein by way of George Saunders, but he is even more original than that. This book will make your heart swell.” —Claire Vaye Watkins
"In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself." —Starred Kirkus Review
AUTHOR: Born and raised in Oakland, California, Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, as well as a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts and a 2014 MacDowell Colony Fellow.
This free event will be held at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Chairs for open seating are usually set up an hour before the event begins.
