There There

We didn't have last names before they came. When they decided they needed to keep track of us, last names were given to us, just like the name Indian was given to us. Tommy Orange's 2018 debut...

Virtually all of the characters in There There are dealing with personal issues of one kind or another. The most significant of these issues is addiction, whether it's drug addiction or alcohol...

In There There, Tommy Orange seems to depict femininity in terms of trauma, hardship, displacement. Let's talk about Jacquie and Opal. The half-sisters are constantly displaced. They move from...

The multiple perspectives that different characters offer on community, belonging, alienation, and indigenous identity in relation to Oakland help the reader understand the city’s complexity....

In the fourth and last part of There There, Tommy Orange develops the theme of generational trauma and wounds by addressing family relationships and exploring diverse attitudes toward Native...

In the novel There There, curses are subtle and psychological. We can think of the curses as old grievances from the past. They do not directly affect a person's future, though they could depending...

Tony is the name of one of the main characters in Tommy Orange's novel, whose full name is Tony Loneman. As you might already be aware from having read the novel, Tony is not the most confident or...

Blue’s conflict about her own sense of identity is shaped to a considerable extent by not having known her birth mother. Blue was adopted at birth by a white family and so was never able to...

After graduating with his master’s degree in comparative literature, with a focus on Native American literature, Edwin Black failed to find a job. He moved back in with his mother and has spent the...

There seems to be lots of discrimination going on in Tommy Orange’s novel There There. We think you could talk about discrimination in connection with not just one character but with an array of...

In Tommy Orange’s novel There There, violence occurs in different forms. With Tony Loneman, you might claim some of the violence that he experiences predates his birth. In this sense, Tony’s...

As you probably know from having read the book, Blue was born because Harvey raped Jacquie. Rather than raise a child that was born out of sexual assault, Jacquie gave Blue up for adoption. Who...

Addiction is quite a common characteristic of Native American life as it is depicted in There There. Tony Loneman suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome due to his mother’s addiction. It has made his...

While I can only speculate as to the intentions of author Tommy Orange, it seems to me that he might choose to build empathy for Octavio to highlight the incredible messiness that surrounds the...

There are plenty of great examples of character growth in There There. As a first example, let's look at Edwin Black. He has been living an isolated life, stymied by frustrations in his academic...

Tony Loneman would be an interesting character to examine for this prompt. Because he suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome, Tony has always struggled with fitting into any society. Even his last...

From the earliest days of American television, right up until the 1970s, an Indian Head was used as part of the TV transmission card that would be broadcast after programming had ended for the day....

In the prologue to There There, Tommy Orange presents the reader with a tragic litany of cruelty and genocidal repression carried out over several centuries by the white man against Native...

Tommy Orange's title works on several levels. The two word phrase is a common one, which people use to suggest comfort and reassurance to someone in distress. As the characters are all in unsettled...

Initially, you could say that drumming at the powwow has an intoxicating impact on Thomas. As you might remember, Thomas seems to view drumming as an activity he’s destined to do. According to...

In part 4 of There There, as you probably already know, we see Tommy Orange bring the generational trauma to a climax through a violent shootout. When it comes to Tony, we could also see Tony's...

Orange describes Oakland vividly and variously throughout the novel There There. Following twelve different perspectives of the city, readers are taken into families and jobs, into histories and...

Tommy Orange, who belongs to both the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, brings a unique perspective to American literature. Modern America is often still tempted to separate Natives from mainstream...

One great quote that encompasses familial identity, racial identity, and American identity involves Tony Loneman. In part 1, Tony discusses how fetal alcohol syndrome (“the Drome”) has impacted his...