PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.
A contemporary classic, this "astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale) "places Native American voices front and center" (NPR/Fresh Air).
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism
A book with "so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation" (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down--full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.
Don't miss Tommy Orange's new book, Wandering Stars!
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST - PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER - A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER - ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION NOMINEE
One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Dallas Morning News, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe
"Powerful. . . . There There has so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation." --The New York Times
"With a literary authority rare in a debut novel, it places Native American voices front and center before readers' eyes." --NPR/Fresh Air
TOMMY ORANGE is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California.