Author Tommy Orange fights for modern Native representation in 'There There'

▤ Summary

Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people — which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, is now out of circulation.” Orange couldn’t find many books that spoke to his own experience. Stories simply weren’t being published about people like Orange, urban Native Americans in cities of glass and steel, wearing ball caps and sneakers. “I wanted to write something that felt like right now.” Orange spoke by phone while on tour promoting “There There.” He’ll be at Changing Hands Bookstore on Thursday, June 28, for First Fiction, a lineup of three first-time novelists reading from and signing copies of their books. Joining him are Joseph Cassara with “The House of Impossible Beauties” and Fatima Farheen Mirza with “A Place for Us.” After that devastating prologue, “There There” splits into a multiplicity of Native voices, as if making up for lost ground: Tony Loneman, a young man who has grown up with “The Drome,” or fetal alcohol syndrome; Edwin Black, who struggles with morbid obesity and Internet addiction and is on the hunt for his birth father; and Jacquie Red Feather, a recovering alcoholic with one dead daughter, another given up for adoption and three grandsons she’s never met. What: Three first-time authors read and sign copies of their books: “There There” by Tommy Orange; “The House of Impossible Beauties” by Joseph Cassara; and “A Place for Us” by Fatima Farheen Mirza.

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