Diversity Book Club: There There

Critically-acclaimed author Tommy Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes explores identity and what it means to be an urban Native American in There There, the next installment of the Diversity Book Club spring series. The discussion will be held April 21 at noon in the Toppie Bates Room. Light refreshments will be provided. All are invited regardless if you have read the book.

A finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, “There There” tells the story of 12 characters from Native communities as they travel toward the Big Oakland Pow Wow. Their lives intersect in unexpected ways as the novel builds towards its searing climax.

“Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There feels like a reflection of my own childhood and presents a well-needed dialogue on the urban Indigenous identity,” wrote Krystyna Printup (Tuscarora, Turtle Clan) for “A Gathering of the Tribes” online magazine in 2018.   “There There is a powwow in itself, a gathering of nations, of tribes, of ideas; a celebration (or in this case tragedy). Orange has successfully presented to us a new voice for the contemporary Native community and the Urban Native generation.”

There There earned the PEN/Hemingway Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of the Year.

In February 2024, Orange published Wandering Stars, a follow-up to There There. Wandering Stars follows the descendants of a Cheyenne survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre, catches up to the present day and moves into the aftermath of There There.

St. James’ Diversity Book Club