There There is a work of fiction, but it begins with a nonfiction essay that shatters the myth of the stoic Native, portrayed over the years by the iconic Indian head image, which was once ubiquitous on nickels and on late night TV. 'There's a dehumanization that's happened with Native people'

'We pick a book a season to focus on and this has very easily been voted on as the one they want to promote.' 'It is what people are talking about,' she says. She says her entire staff is recommending Orange's novel. Hannah Oliver Depp works for WORD Bookstores in Brooklyn and Jersey City. Making an impression on booksellers is crucial to a young writer's success, and based on the feedback in New York, There There has very much caught the attention of this community. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. And now, with the publication of his first novel, he's taking another leap - this time, from the solitary world of reading and writing to center stage at BookExpo.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title There There Author Tommy Orange The leap to writing seemed like a natural progression for Orange. 'And I wasn't a reader, so fiction was a super novel thing for me, and the novel itself was. 'I was in my 20s and also searching for meaning,' he says. But after graduating from college with a degree in sound engineering, he couldn't find work, so he got a job at bookstore where he developed a passion for reading. As a kid, Orange wasn't much of a reader. Orange's mother is white, and his father is Cheyenne. Set in Oakland, Calif., it explores the lives of Native Americans who live in cities, not reservations - lives like that of its author, who himself grew up in Oakland. This year, There There by Tommy Orange is one of those books. He says, 'I wanted to represent a range of human experience as a way to humanize Native people.'Įvery year at BookExpo, the publishing industry's annual conference, a few books emerge as front-runners in the competition for readers.

Tommy Orange's debut novel features a wide cast of characters who are all Native American, with varying degrees of connection to the culture.

The book there there