A short life of the author
Tommy Orange (b. 2 June 1982) was born in Oakland, California. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He grew up in Oakland, not on a reservation — a biographical fact that is inseparable from his literary project. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe for his MFA.
Life and Career
There There (2018) opens with a prologue that is, in itself, one of the most important pieces of American nonfiction written in the twenty-first century: a compressed history of violence against Native people — from Columbus through Indian boarding schools, the Trail of Tears, and the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (which moved thousands of Native Americans to cities like Oakland) — told with a fury and precision that leaves no room for sentimentality. The prologue ends: “We are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do.”
The novel then follows twelve characters of Native descent living in Oakland as they converge on the Big Oakland Powwow. The characters range across generations and circumstances: Dene Oxendene, a young man making a documentary about urban Indians; Tony Loneman, a teenager with fetal alcohol syndrome who is being recruited for a robbery; Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, a postal worker haunted by her childhood; Edwin Black, a half-Native man searching for his absent father; and several others connected by blood ties they don’t always know about. The novel builds toward the powwow with the structural tension of a heist novel, and the climactic violence — when the robbery is attempted — is devastating.
There There was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the American Book Award, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by virtually every major publication.
Wandering Stars (2024) was both a prequel and a sequel: it traces characters from There There backward to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, through the Indian boarding school era, and forward to the aftermath of the powwow shooting, exploring how historical trauma reverberates across generations. It was praised for its ambition but received a more mixed critical response than the debut.
Themes and Style
Orange’s central argument — embodied in the title There There, a Gertrude Stein quote about Oakland (“There is no there there”) — is that urban Native experience is authentic Native experience. The literary establishment’s image of the Native American is the reservation, the ceremony, the landscape. Orange insists that the Indian living in a city apartment, watching Seinfeld, struggling with addiction, and wearing regalia to a powwow is no less Native — and that this urban experience, which defines the majority of Native American lives, has been almost entirely absent from American literature.
His prose style is direct and muscular, influenced by hip-hop rhythms and oral storytelling. The polyphonic structure — multiple first-person and close-third-person voices — creates a communal portrait of a people rather than an individual bildungsroman. The violence in his work is never gratuitous: it is the present-tense expression of centuries of historical violence against Native people.
Critical Standing
Orange is the most important Native American fiction writer since Sherman Alexie, and his work has displaced Alexie’s as the primary literary reference point for contemporary Native experience — a transition accelerated by the Alexie sexual harassment allegations of 2018. There There opened the space for a new generation of Native writers (Brandon Hobson, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Stephen Graham Jones) to write about contemporary urban Native life.
Key Works
- There There (2018)
- Wandering Stars (2024)
What is There There by Tommy Orange about?
There There follows twelve Native American characters living in Oakland, California, as they converge on the Big Oakland Powwow. Connected by blood ties, history, and the shared experience of urban Native life, the characters include a documentary filmmaker, a teenager with fetal alcohol syndrome, a postal worker, and several others whose stories build toward a devastating climax. The novel is a Pulitzer finalist that redefined how American literature represents Native identity.
Collecting Orange
There There (2018, Knopf, New York) first editions bring $25–$70 in fine condition. Signed first editions bring $60–$150. The book’s literary significance and its widespread adoption in university curricula suggest strong long-term collectability. Wandering Stars (2024, Knopf) is widely available at $10–$25.