"There, There" Short-Listed for Pulitzer Prize '19 Fiction - Native Amer. Lives Now Now

Tommy Orange's debut novel is a rare work of literary genius that garners critical acclaim & major writing awards and puts the reader to shame for ignoring the impoverished cycle of Native Americans that have continuously been brutalized, oppressed and left to fend for themselves.  Orange's prologue is a piercing essay dating back to 1621 outlining the genocides and barbarity thrust upon Native Americans by the encroaching white populations who stopped at nothing to eliminate an unwanted indigenous population who inhabited very much wanted land.  Orange's blazing debut novel is set in contemporary Oakland, CA where "Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a 500 year old genocidal campaign."  The novel's title is appropriated from Gertrude Stein's poem referencing the return to her hometown of Oakland "There is no there, there."  The novel coalesces the lives of a dozen Native Americans living in Oakland which intersect and combust in a Native Pow-wow at the local coliseum.  An armed robbery planned & perpetrated by dissociated youths of Native American ancestry to steel the prize money awarded turns into a deadly melee.  The heart-wrenching irony is compounded knowing the opportunities to break the cycle of poverty, substance abuse and inertia at the root of the distressing problems fires back, blaming its own community of Native Americans.  Lonny is a child of fetal, alcohol syndrome fully aware of his distorted face & learning disabilities.  Jacqui Red Feather is raising her sister's grandsons while she struggles with her own sobriety working as a substance abuse counselor.  And, Calvin is a youth at odds with his disconnection from his ancestral history and mired in inertia sorting how to manage in today's society are several of the novel's glaring characters weaved within a novel of startling grace and utter dismay.  Jacquie Red Feather explains "its that you get stuck, and then the more stuck you get, the more stuck you get."  Dene, also a Native Amer.  from Oakland receives a grant to capture stories of tribal members.  Dene realizes for "Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it's been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, un-returnable memory.  There is no there there."  Orange's glorious novel is potent  yet cognizant of the futility for redemption.  "Remembering itself is becoming old fashioned."