There There, a novel by Tommy Orange, explores the identity and culture of the modern Native in Oakland through twelve main characters and their overlapping stories. Native stories, the ones that make it to the present and are not perpetually stuck in the past, do not have a large share of modern media. Many people’s mental image of the Native American struggle looks a lot like the Trail of Tears, cowboys and Indians, and worn-out history book depictions of Thanksgiving. Orange opens the book with the intentions to set this wonky record straight and remind his non-Native audiences of the atrocities directed at Native people across America. He takes the time before starting the narrative to point out the current caricature of a Native person in the average American’s mind: “We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and our current state as a people. We have the sad, defeated Indian silhouette, and the heads rolling down temple stairs, we have it in our heads, Kevin Costner saving us, John Wayne’s six-shooter slaying us, an Italian guy named Iron Eyes Cody playing us in movies” (Orange 7). He moves to describe the atrocities on the next page, painting his audience a gruesome but true image of the violence committed against Native people to break both their bodies and their spirits as a race: “They did more than kill us. They tore us up. Mutilated us. Broke our fingers to take our rings, cut off our ears to take our silver, scalped us for our hair. […] They broke soft baby heads against trees. Then they took our body parts as trophies and displayed them on a stage in downtown Denver” (Orange 8). This imagery is horrifying on purpose. To discuss Orange’s take on the modern Native identity, we must look back at the past that shapes the current oppression Native people across the country face. This is a past stained by blood, wrought with genocide and assimilation meant to completely destroy Native cultures. To understand the alcoholism and disconnect from Native traditions many of the characters face, we must address a system designed from the beginning to destroy Native communities from the outside and from within. Tommy Orange does not let the reader sit idly in their whitewashed ideas about Native identities and forces them to confront the truth—the bloody, horrifying truth of colonialism and genocide.
This post does an excellent job of outlining the importance of the prologue to There, There. This prologue is essential in setting the context and the tone for the novel, and it is a vehicle through which Tommy Orange grounds his fictional story in the very real history of indigenous peoples.
ReplyDeleteThe class discussions on this novel revealed how few people learned about Native American history. Rather than explain the long string of atrocities against indigenous peoples, most high schools taught episodic and infrequent lessons on this topic. As a result, the prologue offers a starting point for readers to understand the plight faced by Native Americans. The context Orange provides is incredibly important, as it begins to tell the story of a traditionally marginalized group.
To connect this back to the story, Orange utilizes this prologue to ground his story. Orange graphically describes an occasion in which colonists were “kicking the heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls” (5). He explicates how Texas Rangers “took Murieta’s head... on a tour throughout California” in 1853 (5). He also explains a more recent display of racism: the “Indian Head” test pattern that ran from 1939 until the late 1970s (3). By explaining the continual racism and massacre of indigenous people, Tommy Orange sets the stage for the characters in his novel, who are influenced by the atrocities committed against their ancestors. Additionally, by explaining these tragic massacres throughout time, Orange argues that, despite the fictional nature of this novel, the struggles and systematic issues present within the pages are still very relevant today.
Like you said, the prologue does a great job of setting the tone for the whole novel. Many of us are only familiar with the distorted image of Native Americans that we see on TV. This prologue filled in the gaps left by our history textbooks to open our eyes to the past atrocities faced by the Native community. This history helps us understand the generational trauma experienced by the novel's characters and what their world's look like. Without the prologue, the experiences of the characters may feel confusing, or the tone of the book may not come across in the correct, heavy way it was meant to.
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