Tommy Orange

So I'm like, I'm not, I don't have a ton of time this week, but I'm hoping to read, like crack open a nonfiction book about the Lakota people around the same time that my character is living in that region.

And I do need to read Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange.

And if I get a little bit of writing done, I would say like, if I had to get 500 words done, I would be That would be some progress.

I do have, I think around 2000 words already written.

There's an emotional cost.

[upbeat music] Native American novelist Tommy Orange reckons with finding out one of his influences was not indigenous.

It's Monday, October 12th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

For years, King assumed his absent father was Cherokee.

Then last year, DNA tests showed no Native blood.

Many indigenous writers long looked up to King, including Tommy Orange.

You might know his 2018 novel There There, or its follow-up, Wandering Stars.

I kind of abandoned The Lost Journals of Sakagawea, which I g- I know my mentor really wants me to read, and my teacher from the f- fall residency or summer residency really highly recommended, but I'm [laughs] really struggling with it.

So I picked up Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars, and it's an extension of the first book he wrote, There There, which I really loved.

So I'm going to commit to trying to read that book this week, and writing a thousand words, and potentially querying, [laughs] potentially querying, like, two or three agents.

Does that sound crazy? Ugh, um, it's, it sounds crazy to me.

And then, yeah, I'll see you again on Thursday.

So I think that's enough.

A thousand words, finish Tommy Orange's book, query two to three agents.

Yeah, I think I can do it.

It's always sepia toned, always historical, always tragic.

How does Tommy Orange break that habit in his 2018 novel, There There?

He breaks it by entirely refusing the premise that native people are a relic of the past.

There There focuses on urban Indians living in Oakland, featuring 12 distinct voices all converging on a local powwow at the Oakland Coliseum.

Steinbeck's agricultural valley is completely alien to Viramontes' reality.

Chandler's romanticized Los Angeles is not Mosley's Watts, and it certainly isn't Butler's apocalyptic wasteland.

Muir's pristine, empty mountains do not have room for Tommy Orange's modern Oakland.

But that disagreement, that intense friction, that is the very definition of the state.

With big thinkers at the best live events, on ABC Radio National, I'm Claire Nichols, sitting in for Natasha Mitchell while she takes a break.

And since it began in 2014, the art project Future Library has commissioned works from Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, the Icelandic poet Sjón, Nobel laureate Han Kang, and in June this year, Native American author Tommy Orange, and Indian author Amitav Ghosh.

They've all written manuscripts that will never be seen in their lifetimes.

They'll be printed on paper from a spruce forest of 1,000 trees growing just outside of Oslo.

So like, I think that this is something that as I've progressed in my career, I've learned that, you know, having like a tour booker and all of that, It's like you, that's for like crazy A-listers, super successful.

Like Tommy Orange has a tour booker, you know, like Tommy Orange, very nice, good dude.

But it's like, oh, he has somebody booking his tour.

Once I get to the New York Times bestseller, Tommy Orange level, then maybe somebody will do it for me.

Yeah.

But right now it's a lot of, you know, reaching out to different orgs and colleges and museums who have booked me in the past.

This is the terminology that Yerge uses.

And after reading, you know, Tommy Orange's There There this year, I have to admit, I am far less certain and far more confused about what is considered the correct word to describe the people who lived on this continent before European colonialism.

But, you know, I feel like having the correct vernacular when it comes down to genocide was probably on the very fucking low end of what we were trying to do,

right?

Neither am I.

But

again, read Tommy Orange's There There and get less confused or more.

Now, this quote deals with the inspiration of the background and setting where the many battles within the trilogy takes place, which is the step in present-day Ukraine.