I’m going to be totally honest with you—I couldn’t finish Bridget Foley’s Hugo & Rose. When picking up a book is a chore, that’s a huge signal for me that the book and I aren’t a good fit.
Things started off so promisingly. I came across a used copy of Hugo & Rose at a Goodwill Bookstore and the cover caught my eye. You have to admit that it’s gorgeous. The blurb intrigued me, too. It describes a plot in which Rose, a thirty-something wife and mother, is disappointed with her life, but she has dreamt every night since the age of six of a fantastical island and the same boy—Hugo. When she runs across Hugo in real life, they set out to discover the secret of their connection. That sounds fun and interesting, right?
Wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.
(Heads up: There are going to be some spoilers here for the first half of the book. I didn’t get to the ending so I can’t spoil that for you.)
I have seldom found a book so alarmingly depressing. Rose started having dreams of Hugo after she went into a coma after a bicycle accident when she was six. She grows up, marries a man who absolutely adores her, and has three beautiful children. But her husband works a lot and Rose has gotten heavy, so she feels like her whole life is a terrible disappointment. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that clinical depression is a very real thing and I take it seriously. But Foley writes Rose so unsympathetically. She has a therapist but lies to her. She refuses medication and so she “talks herself better.” Sorry, but when you’re as severely depressed as Rose seemed to be, “talking yourself better” isn’t a thing. Either Rose is chemically depressed and she needs medication, or she’s being a big whiny baby about her (extremely) first-world problems. It’s one or the other.
One day, when Rose is taking her kids to a soccer game (horror of horrors), she comes across a man who looks like the Hugo from her dreams. She becomes obsessed with this guy. She leaves her youngest child, a toddler, with a babysitter so she can drive an hour away each day to stalk the guy. When the babysitter isn’t available, Rose just takes her daughter in the car and lets the (again, VERY young child) live in her car seat, distracted by her tablet and eating fast food. All so Rose can follow this man who doesn’t know she exists.
The whole idea made me feel very uncomfortable—almost physically ill. I’m not usually squeamish, but the thought that Rose was ignoring the actual important things in her life so she can stalk someone just gave me the creeps.
Of course, eventually Rose introduces herself and, sure enough, it’s actually the Hugo from her dreams. He turns out to be way underwhelming, but they’re so thrilled to have found each other. I started to have some hope for this book, but then it got weird. For some reason, Hugo and Rose, who are both way more attractive in their shared dreams, never got together in their dreams. Like, in their thirty-plus years of dreaming together, they never kissed or anything in their dreams. Until, that is, Hugo discovers that Rose is an actual person. Once he knows she has a husband and children, that’s when he decides to kiss her in one of their dreams. And suddenly Rose is lusting after this guy who is now very real and very much not her husband.
I hated every second of it. I could see if they’d been romantic in their dreams beforehand. I think most people have dreams like that. It’s the fact that there was no romance until it was real, until it was forbidden, that makes me mad. I get that book characters are supposed to be flawed, but it made them both so unlikeable. I couldn’t get past it.
And so ends my journey with Hugo and Rose. I have no idea how the book ends, and basically this blog post is just my scream into the void about how much this book bugged me. But I really needed to get it out.
“People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.”
Caroline B. Cooney, Both Sides of Time
If you went to elementary school in the ’90s, you probably did SSR (silent sustained reading) at least a few times a week. It was my absolute favorite part of school. For those thirty minutes or so, I didn’t have to try to solve a math problem or remember the states of matter. I just had to read. It was heaven.
I have vivid memories of picking up my first time-travel book, but I can’t for the life of me place the images I see in my mind’s eye in a particular classroom. Was I in fourth grade or fifth? Who was the teacher? I honestly can’t remember. But whoever it was had a copy of Caroline B. Cooney’s Both Sides of Time on her shelf, and I picked it up on a whim. You may know Cooney’s name from her better known work, The Face on the Milk Carton. I read that book the same year, I think, but Cooney’s Time Travelers series has stuck with me longer.
Annie Lockwood is a modern girl (I mean, modern for the ’90s) who is disappointed by what she considers the lack of romance in her life. When she accidentally falls through time and ends up in 1895, she meets the Stratton family and (predictably) falls in love with Strat, the son and heir. Their romance puts a snag in a lot of people’s plans, there’s a murder mystery, and, of course, the fact that Annie could accidentally go back to the present at any time. It’s definitely a YA series, not overly complicated, but my goodness did I love it. This series is perfect brain candy for days when you just want a satisfying story without having to think too hard.
After Annie and Strat’s adventures, I left time travel alone for a while. Middle school and high school were pretty much dominated by Harry Potter, and who can blame me? I’d say my next real foray into time-travel literature was in college when I read Susanna Kearsley’s The Winter Sea. You guys, I was enamored of this book.
An author visits an old Scottish castle to write about a Jacobite attempt to place exiled James Stewart back on the throne of Scotland. She finds herself remembering this she never knew in the first place, which raises definite questions about her connection to Slains and the events that took place there. It not a time-travel story in the traditional sense, but it definitely has that feel to it. I learned a ton of historical information from this book, and it was really enjoyable. Definitely recommended.
Now here’s where I’ll admit that Susanna Kearsley is, in my opinion, a really inconsistent author. Some of her books are spectacular, and others are mediocre at best. Belleweather is one of the former. It’s, again, not a traditional time-travel story, but it involves the French and Indian War, star-crossed lovers, and ghosts. It’s a perfect beach read and also dripping with historical info. The perfect combination, in my opinion.
And now we come to my other favorite time-travel series. I devoured the first four or five books in Sarah Woodbury’s After Cilmeri series in the course of one weekend. (There are actually 16 books in the series, so forgive me for not showing all of them.) This series centers around Meg, modern young woman who goes back in time and ends up in the company of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last prince of Wales. I knew practically nothing about the history of Wales, but these books sent me into a deep dive. It’s fascinating. Basically, this whole series asks the question, “What would happen if Llywelyn ap Gruffydd didn’t die in an ambush in 1282? What if he’d lived to continue to fight the English and keep Wales an independent nation?” Seriously, such an interesting concept, and each book is a really quick, easy read.
If any of you are looking for some light summer reading with a historical twist, or if you just really dig time-travel romances, you should for sure give some of these a try.
“No matter my origins, there is worth in what I am.”
Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones
Okay. First of all, can we just admire the cover of this book? I don’t really talk about the impact of a beautiful cover, but honestly I pick up a lot of books because of the cover. That was pretty much the case here. I also read the blurb and it looked interesting, but the cover was the first thing that drew me in.
The plot here is really interesting. It’s not anything super new or innovative, but it’s different enough to still feel fresh. In the land of Otera, girls are ritually cut at the age of 15 to determine the color of their blood. If their blood runs red, they are considered “pure” and are able to go on with their lives. If their blood runs gold, they’re considered to be the descendants of demons and are therefore “unclean.” There’s a nationwide death order for all “unclean” girls.
On top of all of this, monsters called deathshrieks stalk the land and kill tons of people. The emperor wants to eliminate the deathshrieks, so he allows the “unclean” girls to live so they can come and fight in his army. As the progeny of demons, the girls have some pretty intense magical skills. They’re faster and stronger than other people, and they’re almost immortal. Some good people to have on your team when you’re fighting monsters.
The protagonist, Deka, is a girl who is a bit of an outcast in her hometown, but who wants desperately to belong. As you can probably predict, her blood runs gold, and she’s given the option to fight for the emperor or die. But even as she avoids the death mandate, she faces the hate of her countrymen, who still consider her to be unnatural. Demonic. Evil. And for a long while, Deka believes it, too.
What I love about this book is the depiction of female friendship and loyalty. When Deka goes to train for combat, she’s put in a training camp with a bunch of other girls. I expected there to be a few who would be her friends and at least one who would be her rival. That’s sort of how things usually go in Young Adult fiction, isn’t it? Whenever you have a group of girls together, there’s got to be at least one who is nasty and competes with the protagonist. And to be honest, I’m sick of it. I was thrilled to discover that that’s not the case in The Gilded Ones. Namina Forna does an amazing job of creating this supportive group dynamic. The girls all watch each other’s backs. They take care of one another. There’s never any question of their loyalty to one another. When I see things like that in literature, I want to sing. Yes! This is how the majority of my female friendships have been, and I love seeing it reflected in fiction.
There’s also a love interest who brings zero drama. None. There’s none of that obnoxious “does he like me or doesn’t he?” that is usually present in YA. Keita is earnest, kind, and competent. I’m totally here for it. Love doesn’t have to be dramatic, and if it is it’s probably not going to last very long. Real love is stable, and I’m so happy that the author chose to portray it that way.
This book does have a few flaws. I felt that there was a lot character-wise that could have been explored, but wasn’t. Maybe Forna is going to get more into that in the next book in the series? I hope so. Otherwise it seems like a wasted opportunity to really get into the meat of these characters.
Also—fair warning—there’s a lot of violence in this book. There’s also discussion of sexual abuse and child abuse, though none of it happens “on screen.” If any of those things are triggering for you, I’d suggest skipping this one.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this debut novel. I’m definitely going to pick up the next one in the series. It’s called The Merciless Ones and it’s supposed to come out later this year.
“This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.”
Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
A couple of years ago, I saw a trailer for a new Cate Blanchett movie titled Where’d You Go, Bernadette? It looked mildly interesting, so I looked up more about it and discovered that it was based off of a book of the same name by Maria Semple. I shelved it on Goodreads and went on my way. It was only this past week that I finally got around to reading it, and I’m so glad I did.
Bernadette Fox is a creative genius living a humdrum suburban existence in Seattle complete with all of the irritating minutiae that comes with it. Her neighbors hate her, her house is crumbling, and her husband is concerned that she’s losing her mind. One day, she disappears, and her daughter sets out on a journey to find her. If that makes it sound like a run-of-the-mill quest plot, let me assure you that it’s not. In fact, the search only takes up the last little bit of the book. Most of the book is spent showing us how Bernadette got to this point.
The story is told mostly through letters and emails, which I usually hate. I just don’t like epistolary novels, but the format worked for this particular plot.
This book has several wonderful things going for it. First, it addresses the issue of mental illness in a way that shines light on it without making fun of it, downplaying it, or romanticizing it. It also shows how mental health isn’t an exact science. Throughout the book, I vacillated between being convinced that Bernadette was having a major breakdown to being sure that everyone was exaggerating that there was nothing wrong with her. Maria Semple did a great job of showing situations from various perspectives while maintaining that air of mystery around Bernadette. Even when you see what happened clearly, you’re never sure that you are seeing it clearly. It was fascinating and very well done.
I also liked the fact that, for once, a woman has a problem that has nothing at all to do with her body. In fact, I don’t remember female bodies being discussed much at all in this book. There is some talk of miscarriage and the resultant feelings of loss and depression, but I can’t think of a single instance of a woman in this book talking about her weight or her looks. Even the teenage girls talk about other things. There was also zero discussion about sexual assault. I’ve often remarked that it seems like rape sells in literature. If something bad happened in a woman’s past, it almost always seems like it ends up being rape. I was almost certain that that’s where this was heading, and I was delighted to find that that wasn’t the case. The fact that the focus of Bernadette’s discontent was her career instead of her body was simply a breath of fresh air.
The characters in this book almost universally behave badly; no one comes off looking all that great. That said, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? has a theme of second chances. People who you thought were beyond redemption turn around and surprise you. Everyone gets a shot to make things right, and they mostly take it. It made for an uplifting read.
However, there was one character who I can’t get behind. Soo-Lin Lee-Segal. I hated Soo-Lin. She was just the worst. A deluded, conniving, myopic, opportunistic little tramp. You could argue that she gets her redemption, too, but I didn’t accept it. If she were a real person I’d have to allow for the fact that everyone should get a second chance, but as a character in a book I’m free to hate her.
Anyway, you should give Where’d You Go, Bernadette? a shot. I think you’ll like it.
There is something profoundly irritating to me about books being mislabeled as love stories. I relish a good love story. A true love story. But some of the most famous romances in literature are not love stories at all. Why does that irritate me? Why should it matter to me if people want to call Wuthering Heights a love story and swoon over Heathcliff? I think because literature informs so much of popular culture and popular thought. The books we read become the movies we watch, the television shows that are produced, and the quotes we pin on Pinterest. They become the tropes that are reused by future authors. They’re the stories little boys and girls grow up reading, the romances they are told they should aspire to. If we as a society mislabel stories of obsession and abuse as stories of love, we’re sending a damaging message to the girls and boys, women and men who read them.
Today, I’m going to discuss two stories that are not love stories. I’ll be doing a part two of this post in which I’ll talk about one more non-love story and one love story that’s been grossly distorted and turned into a terrible trope. But for now, let’s dive in.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is NOT a love story. It’s not. For those of you who need a reminder, Wuthering Heights is about Heathcliff and Cathy. Cathy’s dad adopts Heathcliff, a parentless vagrant child, brings him home and raises him as one of the family. Cathy and Heathcliff immediately connect and, over the years, fall in love.
Cathy eventually befriends Edgar and Isabella Linton, their neighbors. They’re kind to Cathy as the daughter of a wealthy gentleman, but they reject Heathcliff. Edgar proposes to Cathy, and even though she loves Heathcliff, she feels that she can’t marry him because of his low status. So she marries Edgar, and Heathcliff disappears. He returns years later as a wealthy gentleman and attracts the attention of Isabella Linton. He encourages Isabella’s love for him as a way to get back at Cathy and Edgar, and elopes with her. Cathy, cut off from Heathcliff and pregnant with Edgar’s child, dies. Heathcliff begs Cathy’s ghost to haunt him forever.
Heathcliff, of course, doesn’t care about Isabella at all. He treats her terribly, and she leaves him, giving birth to his son on her own. When she dies, Heathcliff brings his son home to live with him, and he encourages a connection between his son and Edgar and Cathy’s daughter. He forces them to marry, even though his son Linton is ill and Cathy (Edgar and Cathy’s daughter) doesn’t actually want to marry him. When Linton dies, Cathy is stuck at Wuthering Heights along with Heathcliff. He goes increasingly crazy, admits that he dug up her mother’s grave after she died, and dies himself in her mother’s old room. In the end, the people in the village say they’ve seen the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy walking the moors, together at last.
I’m sorry. What part of that was a love story? The part where Cathy doesn’t think the man she supposedly loves is good enough for her so she marries someone else? The part where she wastes away because she’s parted from the man she rejected? (Come on, Cathy, have a little dignity.) Or maybe when Heathcliff gets revenge on Cathy and Edgar by destroying Isabella’s life? The part where he continues to try to get revenge by forcing Cathy’s daughter to marry his son? The part where he digs up a woman’s grave? (That part always just creeps me out.) This is a story about obsession and abuse. Obsessive love can seem romantic, but it’s not healthy and it’s not something that anyone should aspire to. Read this book for the prose. Read it for the commentary on class, revenge, and madness. Read it for the vivid descriptions of the moors. Don’t read it looking for a love story, because you won’t find one.
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare is NOT a love story. I might get a lot of heat for this, but I said what I said. I’m assuming we’re all familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet. Two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, hate each other. Romeo Montague sneaks into a Capulet party and sees Juliet Capulet. They “fall in love” (read: are attracted to one another), have that famous love scene on the balcony, and get secretly married by Romeo’s pal Friar Laurence.
Romeo carries on the feud, kills Juliet’s cousin, and is banished from the city. But don’t worry, he pops by her place first (again, after killing her cousin) to consummate the marriage. Can’t neglect that, after all.
Juliet’s parents, who know nothing of her marriage to Romeo, want to marry her off. She pretends to agree, but arranges with Friar Laurence to fake her own death to get out of it. Romeo is supposed to be in on the plan but misses the memo, thinks she’s really dead, and commits suicide by poison. Juliet, seeing Dead Romeo, stabs herself with his dagger.
The feuding families come together to find their dead children and get a stern lecture from the priest about how their endless fighting caused the death of their kids. (Maybe it was actually your really terrible plan, Friar Laurence.)
While this is supposedly one of the greatest romances in literature, what I see is two hormonal teenagers who have a few days of puppy love followed by a few days of angsty separation followed by a weird and needless double-suicide. That doesn’t negate the beauty of Shakespeare’s writing, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the play has no value. But it’s more of a cautionary tale than a love story.
Again, I get it if you like these books. They have literary value. Romeo & Juliet has some of the most beautiful lines ever written. But these two stories are often held up as examples of true love, and that’s not only inaccurate. It’s damaging.
If you’re like me, your To Read list has become so long as to be completely unmanageable. I’ve always got my ear to the ground on the lookout for a good book, but it’s impossible to to read all of those books I see on the bestseller lists. If I do ever get to them, it’s like five years after everyone else has already read them. The Girl on the Train? Still haven’t read it. When Breath Becomes Air? Nope. I have every intention of reading these books, but it’s a Sisyphean task. There’s always another book that I feel like I should have already read.
That said, there are a few books that I’ve gotten to in a (relatively) timely manner, and if you haven’t read them yet, you should move them to the top of your To Read list. ASAP. When I want to recommend a general fiction book, these are the five I find myself recommending again and again.
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
I first read A Fine Balance in high school as part of my AP English Literature class. We had a list of several books to choose from, and I pretty randomly chose this one. It’s been well over a decade since I first picked this up, but it has left an impression on me that few novels have.
A Fine Balance is a tremendous achievement in literature. It follows the stories of four people in India in 1975: Dina, a widow struggling to get by; Ishvar and Omprakash, an uncle and nephew duo who rose above their low caste to work as tailors; and Maneck, a college student who finds the idyllic world of his childhood disappearing. Fate brings these four people come together and they form a kind of family as the forces of greed, hate, and corruption work to tear them apart.
I will tell you that this book isn’t a light read. There some pretty heavy themes, vivid depictions of life in the slums, and some strong language. However, if you’re looking for a book that will make you love literature again, this is that book.
2. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amore Towles
When I first heard the premise of this book, I was skeptical. The entire plot of A Gentleman in Moscow takes place within the confines of one building. The main character, Alexander Rostov, is a Russian aristocrat sentenced by the new Soviet government to spend the rest of his life in the Metropol Hotel. If he steps foot outside the hotel, he will be shot. I had doubts that the author would be able to pull this off, and yet within the confines of the hotel, Amor Towles was able to build a full life for his protagonist. It was masterfully done.
What impressed me most was how Towles managed to bring the experience of Soviet Russia into the Metropol Hotel so Rostov, who never leaves the hotel, still feels the weight of what is happening to his country. Towles brings in several characters who give Rostov insight into the changing world outside, and it’s the relationships between these people that truly drive the story. It’s incredible writing, and if you pass on this one, I’m telling you that you’ll be missing out.
3. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine first seems like simply a quirky book about a quirky woman, but by the end you’ll find yourself reveling in the depth of the character development Gail Honeyman was able to create. Eleanor is such a well-rounded character. She is strong. She managed to survive some really traumatic things in her past, and in the beginning she has herself, and you, believing that she really is, on the whole, completely fine. Her weakness is that she wrapped herself in a blanket of isolation, thinking this would protect her from pain. It did the exact opposite. I think this independent loner character type is often glamorized in literature, but EOICF shows us that people are stronger when they have fulfilling and reciprocal relationships. People need people.
There are themes of abuse, mental illness, and neurodiversity, along with the importance of relationships. It’s deceptively heavy stuff in spite of the fact that you’ll also laugh out loud at some of Eleanor’s antics, and Honeyman is able to balance it perfectly. People have been talking about this one since it came out in 2017, so it’s probably on your To Read list. Bump it up on the list.
4. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
Okay, first let me put you out of your misery. The name is pronounced “Oo-veh.” It’s not “Ovie” and it’s not “Oh-vay.” It’s a pet peeve of mine and if you’re going to read this book, then gosh darn it you’re going to pronounce the man’s name correctly.
This book is relatable on so many levels, first of all because we all know Ove. I can guarantee that you’ve met Ove at some point in your life. He’s the crotchety older man who starts sentences with “Kids today….” and will argue with a sales clerk over minutiae. He’s got weird feuds with his neighbors that go back years. He can fix your air conditioner and thinks you’re an idiot if you can’t too, but also has zero idea how to turn on his computer. You know him, right?I know you do, and unless he’s your grandpa or something, you probably can’t stand him. A Man Called Ove humanizes him and gives him a backstory. It also challenges him and changes him, and is just generally one of the most heartwarming things I’ve read in a long time.
5. The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh
I know two other people who have read The Language of Flowers. One of them loved it, as I did. The other one was so stressed out by it that she was unable to enjoy it and we still argue about this book to this day. You know who you are.
Let me tell you why I love The Language of Flowers. First of all, you get to learn about Victorian flower language, which is fascinating. I think we all know things like “red roses mean romance,” but truly the language of flowers was a language. (Okay, maybe not in the strictest linguistic sense, but the point is that it’s much more complex than “red rose = I love you.”)
We meet the main character, Victoria, as she ages out of the foster care system and has to strike out in the world on her own. She…struggles (hence my friend’s stress). But we get to watch her learn to trust herself and others. We see her find her confidence and her competence. We find out about the heartbreak that she’s caused and endured, and we see her learn to forgive and be forgiven. It’s a beautiful story, and if it sounds at all appealing to you, you should grab it from your local library. Then let me know what you think of it, since this is one of the more controversial books on my list (at least in terms of my own social circle).
If you’re looking for something to read, I hope you’ll give one of these a shot. And if you do, let me know what you thought about it!
This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered.
Tommy Orange, There There
We’ll start today with that heavy quote because There There by Tommy Orange is a heavy book. It’s brilliant. It’s eye-opening. But it’s heavy.
There There was put on my reading list as part of a mass addition of Authors of Color. With everything that has been going on recently, I’ve become aware that I have too long allowed myself to be one of the people on the above-mentioned yacht, mostly unaware of the struggles of the people in the water and my own position of privilege aboard the ship. As I’ve opened myself up to the message of Black Lives Matter and other similar movements, I have come to see some of the ways in which I’m part of the problem. One thing that stood out to me, as a reader, is the fact that I have read an embarrassingly small amount of literature written by People of Color. I counted. Of the over 500 books I have listed as Read on Goodreads, just over 30 of the authors were People of Color.
So, a few weeks ago, I did some googling and found lists of must-read books by Black authors, Latinx authors, Arab authors, East Asian authors, and Indigenous authors. If you haven’t done this exercise, I’d encourage it. It was enlightening to see the mountains of rich literature that I’d been previously unaware of. There There was one of my finds.
This book centers around one event – the Big Oakland Powwow. In little vignettes, we’re introduced to a huge cast of characters who are all tied to the powwow in some way. There’s Tony Loneman, a twenty-one year old drug dealer of Cheyenne heritage living with fetal alcohol syndrome. Dene Oxendene is an aspiring documentary maker who is trying to capture stories of Native people. There’s Edwin Black, a biracial man who never knew his father, is battling an internet addiction, and is pushed by his mother into an internship helping with the powwow. There are Opal and Jacquie, two middle-aged sisters dealing with the fallout of their childhood involvement in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in the 1970s. The character list is extensive. Those are just a few. The way that Tommy Orange is able to weave the strands of all of these lives together, to get them all to that powwow, is masterful.
He really succeeds in giving each character a different voice. In fact, when I first read a portion narrated by Tony Loneman, I was a little put off by the excessive swearing. It seemed like every other word was a curse, and I started to get annoyed. “Does this author not know any other words?” I wondered. As I continued reading, I realized that the character didn’t know any other words. Tony Loneman, a drug dealer, raised by his grandmother, someone whose IQ measured extremely low due to fetal alcohol syndrome – he cursed a lot. When the author shifted to another character’s point of view, the vocabulary changed. It added authenticity to the voice of each character.
The book starts with a prologue, and there’s an interlude as well. These sections are filled with short essays on issues in the Native community at large and in the community specific to Oakland. These were some of my favorite bits of writing. It’s the kind of prose must take tremendous effort to write, but Tommy Orange made it seem effortless.
Orange addressed several themes in There There: suicide in Native people, addiction, the search for identity, gun violence, privilege, and what it means to be Native.
On suicide:
“Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. Convince them that burning alive is better that leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. We’ve boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. They’re making the decision that it’s better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we’ve made for them, the one they’ve inherited. And we’re either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths…or we’re absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not just silence but is not speaking up.”
On identity:
“…Anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian. More or less a real Indian. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it is precious. You’re Indian because you’re Indian because you’re Indian.”
There’s so much more there, and it was the first time I’ve ever heard a Native American story told by an actual Native American. For so long, these people have had their story told by other people, by history books written by white scholars, by elementary school students playacting the First Thanksgiving, by Hollywood movies in which the powers that be cast Johnny Depp (of all people) to play Tonto in The Lone Ranger. It was moving, in itself, to hear a Native American story told by someone whose story it is to tell.
Okay, there are going to be spoilers from here on. If I’ve convinced you, go read There There, and then come back.
The culminating event, the Big Oakland Powwow, is marred by tragedy when Octavio, Tony, Charles, and Calvin all try to rob the powwow. In the interlude, Tommy Orange lets us know that that’s where this is going, so we watch it happen like a car crash you see coming but can’t prevent. Orange shifted through the points of view as Dene, Bill, Orvil, Tony, and others got shot, so it was like watching each one of them fall. You’d think that after one death scene it would be like beating a dead horse, but Orange managed to make each death impactful.
I think it was also poignant that most of the deaths were accidental. Octavio, Tony, Charles, and Calvin weren’t intending to kill the people at the powwow. They just wanted the money. They got into a fight among themselves and the passersby were caught in the crossfire. This seemed to me to be a symbol for the deaths of Native Americans as a whole. In some cases, the U.S. government absolutely committed active, unapologetic genocide against Native Americans. But there were other times when it seems like the lives of Native Americans were collateral damage, caught in the storm of bullets simply because they were in the way.
This quote, in particular, broke me:
“Something about it will make sense. The bullets have been coming from miles. Years. Their sound will break the water in our bodies, tear sound itself, rip our lives in half. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact we’ve been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.”
