THERE THERE: On the violence of silence & the privilege of culture

Season 1, Episode 3 Transcript

(Note: following this transcript is a list of other books by Native authors, which you may purchase through The Lift Up’s shop on bookshop.org*)

T: Hello, I’m Tamara Crawford, here with Vina Orden. And this is The Lift Up Podcast — inviting you to discover empowering reads by marginalized writers. In this Episode #3, we’re discussing Tommy Orange’s debut novel, There There.

Tommy Orange is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and is the son of a white mother and Native father. Like most of the characters in this novel, he is a self-described “urban Indian,” born and raised in Oakland, California. There There, published in 2018, is Orange’s first book. It won the American Book Award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. It also was a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

So, let’s get right to it …

T: Vina, great to be back on The Lift Up with you today. It was great to offer up our listeners a bonus conversation with Gina Apostol over the last two weeks, and I’m excited that, for July, we get to feature There There by Tommy Orange.

V: Yeah, that interview with Gina was so much fun! And, one of the things I found interesting that came up in both Gina’s interview with us and at one of Tommy Orange’s readings is the role of fiction in this time, when there’s so much fake news and an information overload at the same time. And Tommy Orange said something that’s both sad and hopeful, which is that (and I paraphrase) fiction and art make the truth compelling enough to be believed. And, it’s not about information anymore. Which, again, is kind of sad to think about what that really means. But also, an explanation of why we do turn to things like novels and things like art that have a way of illustrating the truth that maybe plain, old facts and bullet points on a piece of paper don’t. So, I thought that was very powerful, and I feel like Gina also said something similar in her interview with us.

And it was just so interesting to read There There after Insurrecto, because it allowed me to see all these through-lines in terms of how writers from marginalized groups tackle telling stories about this country.

T: Indeed, yes. This book was an amazing read, and he covers a number of heart-wrenching themes with depth, consideration, and humor. It makes me reflect on how we learned about, and continue to learn about, Native American history in the US. So, Vina, what do you remember learning about Native American history?

V: Wow. So, I remember learning the textbook version of “The First Thanksgiving,” which is probably the first lesson we all know, or are taught, about Native Americans. Which is, of course, problematic because it is based on a colonizer’s account. And, I also remember — and this was more of at a high school level — a brief mention of the “Trail of Tears” when we were learning about Andrew Jackson. But, again, the focus was more on kind of the physical toll and the hardships that the Cherokees were experiencing on what was, essentially, a death march. But, I don’t ever recall talking about what was basically a government-sponsored genocide and the occupation tribal lands.

And, that’s really what’s so impactful about There There. I mean, it starts with this prologue, where he gives a little bit about the history, but told through a Native American lens. And to be honest, before reading this book, I didn’t know the story that he mentions about Metacomet, who was chief of the Wampanoags. Even though, as Tommy Orange points out, it’s easy enough to look up this history on the Internet. Metacomet was one of the many Native Americans who was beheaded by the colonists. And they used those Native American heads on “show and tells” they used to do around the country. And so, when you realize the violent history behind it, it’s all the more appalling to see that image all over the place. There are still sports teams, like the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins, that still use the “Indian head” in their logos.

T: Exactly. And I think, you know, being here in the UK is definitely interesting. I don’t think any of that history comes through around Native Americans or what happened from pretty much, essentially, the 1400s — in terms of how they were treated, in terms of the state-sanctioned genocide. I think in the US, that’s the narrative we got, and as Tommy Orange outlines in the prologue, as you mentioned, the mainstream images we were shown of Native Americans were the Trail of Tears, the reservations, the casinos.

Most people don’t know or associate (I mean, I for one didn’t even remember) the impact of that General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, that was passed in 1887. And, on a high level, that’s where you have that additional, authorized US government-sanctioned view that they could take away lands from Native Americans for some 30 years after the Trail of Tears relocations — and that was a span of 20 years — unless those tribes were deemed “worthy” of keeping their land. And, just looking through that and reading into it, just the amount of land that they took — over 100 million acres of land — and the continued push of Native Americans into the reservation system, but also the detriment to their sovereignty, their culture, and their identity because of this push to assimilate to a European way of life and get rid of their own culture … These are themes that, I think, Tommy Orange so adeptly weaves through his characters’ stories in this novel. I read, in prep for our podcast, his piece in the LA Times that shares so much more that I don’t even remember learning. And, connecting that to “The First Thanksgiving” really makes me want to learn more, in terms of the history that we haven’t been told.

V: Yeah, me too.

T: So, There There is told from the point of view of these twelve different characters whose stories intertwine. Which ones resonated with you, and why?

V: What was so amazing about this book was that I felt like the characters were all really so well-formed, with their own very specific identities and issues. And, if I were to pick one character … I mean it really resonated with me, the character of Dene Oxendene. So, we’re first introduced to him … He has this imposter syndrome going on ’cause he’s kind of in this waiting room, and he’s just having all these thoughts. He’s about to go into an interview, and he’s having all these thoughts that the people who are gonna be on this panel that’s gonna judge his grant application for this documentary that he’s working on — that they’re all gonna be white judges, basically.

And, as someone who’s been sending out my writing for the past 2 ½ years and only getting published last month, which was really exciting for me … That said, I am just filled with doubt whenever I have this imaginary thing in my head — and we did talk about this a little bit in our interview with Gina Apostol — about who these gatekeepers of these literary magazines are. And, I wonder whether my story has to work a lot harder than, say, someone who might look like some of these editors, to overcome biases by those editors who are either unfamiliar with my culture, or who’ve made certain assumptions about it. And I do think that this is probably an added hurdle for any writer of color, or LGBTQ authors, or economically-disadvantaged authors (so, the folks who we want to feature on this podcast). And so, you can’t even just worry about whether or not your writing is good. There’s like some other kind of layer you worry about.

And, the other thing that came up in Dene Oxendene, one of the chapters about him, was this line: “Over the years, he’d been assumed Mexican plenty, been asked if he was Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Salvadoran once, but mostly the question came like this: What are you?” And, as a Pilipina, I feel like I get that a lot.

T: Yeah, I think he really captures a lot of that so well within the book and within his characters. For me it was very clear that identity — the need to know it, not know it, reconcile with it — was so important in a lot of these characters and the way that they reacted to the world around them. In addition to their stories, I found myself enjoying the way that he crafted the Prologue and the Interlude, and how that ties up along with the struggles various characters had — like Edwin Black in finding his father, Orvil Red Feather in wanting to know more about what it means to be Indian against his grandmother’s wishes, and the purposes of the powwow.

There were so many passages in the Interlude that stuck with me, and I spent a lot of time going back over it again, because I just thought what he did there was so poignant … You know, the reason for the powwow being that they “needed a place to be together … where we get to see and hear each other …” And in the section under the Big Oakland Powwow, where he starts to describe who “we” are, in terms of all the ways in which indigenous peoples are described from a global perspective, and it’s quite a long paragraph that he goes through. But, it was really interesting, because I think it serves to highlight the impact of being “one” people, but also in having your identity taken away from you, and the ways in which you try to reclaim that identity, and all the facets of that identity, and what’s been, kind of, put on you as an identity. And I just thought that was a very poignant paragraph … So, let’s talk about the title, There There.

V: So, I had watched one of his Q&As, and he was talking about how, when he first researched writing Oakland, the only quote that really came up was this Gertrude Stein quote, which ended up becoming the title of the book. And I love what he does with that, and how he kind of pokes fun at that in the book. So, again, this is one of the scenes with Dene, where he’s talking to this Oakland “hipster” (that way we could just visualize what this person might be like), and I’m just gonna read this little bit, ’cause it just goes to that so much better than I can describe it:

Dene wants to tell him he’d looked up the quote in its original context, in her Everybody’s Autobiography, and found that she was talking about how the place where she’d grown up in Oakland had changed so much, that so much development had happened there, that the “there” of her childhood, the “there there,” was gone, there was no there there anymore. Dene wants to tell him it’s what happened to Native people, he wants to explain that they’re not the same, that Dene is Native, born and raised in Oakland, from Oakland. Rob probably didn’t look any further into the quote because he’d gotten what he wanted from it. He probably used the quote at dinner parties and made other people like him feel good about taking over neighborhoods they wouldn’t have had the guts to drive through ten years ago.

But for Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it’s been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, unreturnable covered memory. There is no there there.

Yeah, that was such a good summary. And, as someone who’s from New York — and perhaps there’s a degree of this in London as well — just how Tommy Orange talks about gentrification too. I mean, it’s a big issue for folks like us who have grown up in the City, but in many ways, even in the last few decades, it’s changed so much. And more of us are kind of being pushed out, unable to afford living here. That was, I thought, another interesting tangent in the book.

T: Indeed. When I think about Brooklyn, being from East Flatbush way back in the ’80s, and now when I go back, a lot of it’s changed. I think a lot of it would be even unaffordable for me to go back to. I know Spike Lee talks a lot about this, being from Brooklyn as well. I get it. And you know, London has undergone that transformation also. Some of the places that I’ve lived, some of the places I live close to, living here in Southeast London and also talking to people who’ve lived here for a very long time, that “there there” isn’t there. It’s gone. So definitely, it’s a really interesting way in which he’s titled the book.

You know, I also found it really cool the way he links music with various characters and situations. He talks about MF Doom, Radiohead, A Tribe Called Red, Beethoven, Motown, the music from the Powwows … And, I understand Tommy Orange started out as a musician?

V: Yeah, I read that somewhere! Apparently, he plays guitar, and he plays the piano … I mean, he’s just one of these prodigies, I guess, ’cause he also composes for the piano. And when I found out that — because he’s a writer and also a musician — when I saw those specific references to the music, I was like Aha! He’s doing something deliberate here. And so, I just found that listening to the music and the lyrics, along with reading the book, just created that other layer of experience for me.

And, just to go back to the novel’s title … Radiohead also had a song called “There, There,” which is mentioned in that same Dene interview scene/chapter. And when you listen to the song within this context, the first thing that you notice probably is that it has this very strong drum beat. You know, this book is so interesting because I felt it really had that aural quality, and I could hear drums echoing throughout the book. But, in this particular situation where Dene’s about to go to an interview, and he’s dealing with this impostor syndrome thing, listening to the Radiohead lyrics made you chuckle at how it kind of took on a different meaning … lines like, “In pitch dark, I go walking in your landscape”; “Just ’cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”; or “There’s always a siren singing you to shipwreck.”

And the other so interesting reference was the British rapper MF Doom, who is a favorite musician of one of the characters, Tony Loneman (which is an interesting name Lone-man). Tony is disfigured because of fetal alcohol syndrome. And, it was just so sad — whenever he looks in the mirror, he calls his face “The Drome.” And, of course, MF Doom is known mostly that he wears a mask when he performs. And interestingly, I found that the lyrics that are quoted by Tony in the book come from an MF Doom song called “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

T: Oh, wow!

V: Yeah. So that was an interesting kind of connection or maybe a cultural remark there. So these musical references really, for me, amplified a lot of the identity struggles that a lot of the characters are going through.

And there was this one scene with Tony in particular, where it’s written in the first person, and I’m gonna read from it again, so people will get a flavor of the different characters in the book:

I pulled my regalia out and put it on. I went out into the living room and stood in front of the TV. It was the only place in the house I could see my whole body. I shook and lifted a foot. I watched the feathers flutter on the screen. I put my arms out and dipped my shoulders down, then I walked up to the TV. I tightened my chin strap. I looked at my face. The Drome. I didn’t see it there. I saw an Indian. I saw a dancer.

T: Yeah, I highlighted that too as I was reading, thinking about how he sees himself in the screen once he has his full regalia on, how he sees himself every day, generally having to manage the multiplicity of who he is. It’s amazing how he captured it in that quote.

Like a lot of the books that we read, there are so many other themes that run throughout the book that are really interesting, and if we had all the time in the world, we could pull them all out. But some of the ones that I saw impact the various characters in so many ways are things like resiliency (or not needing to have resiliency), ignorance, mental and physical wounds. And I think, there’s quite a bit on mental health and addictions, and the impact of those addictions on people’s lives. So much so, we see that people die because of their addictions or the results of other people’s addictions, right? You see abusive relationships, rape, and other criminal activity. And some of it is quite violent, but the violence, as he has written it, is not gratuitous. And so, it highlights an unfortunate reality for some communities … I mean, what did you think of that when you were reading it?

V: Probably for people who have come from very sheltered or safe communities, the violence must be even more jarring. But, we have to remember that this is the reality for a lot of Black and brown communities. And, I do completely agree that when you look at the history of this country, it’s a history of violence. And we have to say it — specifically, of white supremacy — whether we’re talking about “Indian Removal”; or “Manifest Destiny”; or enslavement; or “The White Man’s Burden,” which justified, as we learned last time, US imperialism in the Philippines and in other places, as well; or immigration exclusion. And, I do believe — and it’s actually been discussed by psychologists like Pilipino psychologist Dr. E.J.R. David — that because we were told for generations that we’re inferior to our colonizers, then told here in the US that we’re inferior to the cultural majority, we stop valuing our culture and start assimilating to a worldview that totally doesn’t reflect our truths.

And in terms of the substance abuse and mental health issues, I mean that is something that is part of my own family history, and I know it’s my dad’s biggest fear for me too. The more I read about other people’s experiences, though — including the characters in There There who are composites of real people whom Tommy Orange knows — the more I realize that these really are diseases of colonization and white supremacy.

And, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m reading a lot from this book in this episode, but there’s just a way that he writes about it that is something I can’t really capture in my own words. There’s this section in the novel where one of the characters, Jacquie Red Feather, who’s a substance abuse counselor who struggles with her own alcoholism — so that’s just very interesting in and of itself — attends this conference on suicide. So I wanted to read a little bit from, it because I feel like it does go to the heart of why there’s so much violence in our communities, or in this particular community:

Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping … We’ve boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. They’re making the decision that it’s better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they’ve inherited. And we’re either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths … or we’re absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not just silence but is not speaking up.

That particular last line, where it talks about how silence is a form of violence too …

T: Indeed. Because when you stay silent, knowing that something violent is happening around you or affecting you, it contributes to it. Especially if you stay silent about the violence that’s inflicted on others, you’re contributing to it. No, I agree.

I go back to the Interlude, again, as a very impactful means for conveying that and tying it all in for the readers to digest. There’s another theme at the heart of There There that centers around who tells the story, something I got from Dene’s story but I also got it from Opal, when her mother says to her, Vicky says to her:

Opal, you have to know that we should never not tell our stories, and that no one is too young to hear. We’re all here because of a lie. They’ve been lying to us since they came. They’re lying to us now!

Offline you mentioned that you found one of Orange’s readings at Politics and Prose bookstore in DC, where he talked about how reticent his father was to pass on stories about their family, and that instead, transmission happened by looking at the pain in his father’s eyes. And he talked about how, on one end, white parents are proud to “flex fake truths” about what this country is to their children; but then on the other end, for oppressed peoples, parents choose to keep the truth from their children so as not to damage them. And that either way, erasure happens and the histories we know are purposefully wrong, they’re incomplete, right? So, what do you think about that, in terms of what your parents have chosen to share or keep from you — I know you’ve talked about this in some of your articles — and, how have you gone on to piece together what you know of yourself and your family?

V: Oh, yeah. I feel this is a lot of what I write about … So, at the height of Covid-19 in New York, this was around April and May, I was really struck by, all of a sudden, the spotlight that was put by all these major media outlets, from The New York Times to the BBC, about — and a lot of them call it the “outsize toll” — of the pandemic on Pilipino health care workers. So, on the one hand, my community suddenly became visible. But then, it also made me angry to just think about how much developed countries rely on the labor of immigrants and people of color, but then they’re the first ones who won’t hesitate to bar us from entry or from a path to citizenship when we’re no longer desperately needed by them.

So, the story that I ended up writing that ended up getting published last month by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop was called The Little Brown Brother’s Burden. And, it reflected on that labor history from my own family’s experience — from my grandfather, whom I’ve talked about before on this show, who was a migrant agricultural laborer in California in the 1930s; to my mother who was recruited as a nurse at the height of the AIDS crisis here in NY in the ’80s; and then, also to my father, who had all these multiple advanced degrees from the Philippines, but then when he came to this country, they weren’t recognized here. So, he kind of had to start all over again from the very bottom when we first joined my mother here in the ‘90s.

I mentioned before that my grandfather didn’t talk much about his time in the US. And, when he returned to the Philippines for good, basically, the only thing he told his sons was, Never immigrate to the US. And my family still can’t talk about how we were separated from each other for four years, when my mom was here, and we were back in the Philippines — my dad, sister, and I — and, our anxiety and depression when we finally moved here (but then, we were just uprooted from everything we knew). And part of that silence was because it almost felt like it would be like a repudiation of my mother’s sacrifices as an Overseas Foreign Worker.

One of my aunts has this saying — and probably it’s telling that she says this all the time — she says, “We’re all walking wounded.” And, I would add that we’re blind and limbless too because of the silence. Because, we’ve lost a lot of the kind of stories in our family from our ancestors about survival and resistance that might guide us in difficult times like this. Because those erasures just keep happening with each generation, they also prevent us from becoming whole. So, I guess, I write about this stuff … And maybe it’s because I see that the work of our generation is to really try to re-collect — and I mean also to collect, in a sense — these stories, and keep telling them. So, we can move from this “survivor” mentality toward more of like a healing and a “thriver” mentality in future generations.

T: Indeed. Your aunt’s saying is so true — we’re all walking wounded. And, your article was amazing, so for all of you out there who would like to read it, it’s on the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s website, and it’s called The Little Brown Brother’s Burden. So, definitely take a look.

V: Oh, thank you for that plug …

T: No, definitely. Thank you for sharing that story. That’s part of this. That’s part of what we’re doing here is helping to elevate those stories.

You know, I agree with you as well. I think our parents and families tend to believe that by not sharing, they are shielding us from the pain and trauma they went through, so that we aren’t damaged. And I know that’s done out of love. But, I also do believe truth eventually comes out somehow, some way, and that we’re stronger and given more opportunity to reconcile with our past and heal when we can learn to share. And I get it — it’s definitely difficult to reopen those wounds. And, I think each person, each family, has to consider if, and how, and when they want to do that in their own ways. But, I think whenever they do, especially given the climate we are in, there’s this bittersweet benefit to sharing our stories and making sure that they’re heard.

V: Yeah. Because these stories do come from a lot of pain, it is an emotional burden to tell these stories. So, I get that too. But, I also believe, though, that knowing and sharing our stories is so important for our own healing. And, there’s also this other aspect — that it’s just so important for the greater public to be aware of the blindspots and the half-truths that we’re all taught in terms of the history of this country.

But, following on that theme of education and exposure — again, I’m referring back to this Q&A that Orange had at one of his Politics & Prose readings — where he had to respond more than once to questioners who asked him how history can be taught more truthfully, or what he could do to expand the audience for the book. And the way that he just kept having to answer this question, you could hear the exasperation in his voice because he probably gets it all the time. And, he correctly points out … He was asking a question back to the audience, Why is the burden on us to educate you or provide solutions to problems we didn’t create?

And, especially in this moment, I do feel that a lot of Black people are also being asked to be responsible for “solving” issues that have been around for centuries and that, let’s face it, stem from white supremacy …

T: Yeah, I agree with you. And it’s very interesting, you know, people have been talking about this for a long time. There’s a lot of information out there that’s readily available written by people who’ve been doing the work. So, in a way, people also have to do their share of the work.

And, having lived outside the US for such a long time, I see how woefully apparent it is that people aren’t taught that history globally. So, I find myself on two sides sometimes, in which I acknowledge that the amount of information has always been out there, and people who’ve always fought to create space to share that information — they’ve published, they’re on social media, they get the information out there. But then, there’s also this feeling and this need to curate that into readily available information as a starting point for people to launch from. And, I think, depending on how it affects you and what you’re inclined to do, so many people will take different approaches to how they handle that question, all of which is valid. And, I think this also ties into the points that we discussed with Gina as well in last month’s conversation … You know, that people do have to do the work.

V: Yeah, I totally agree. And, we learn by doing the work. I mean, can we really expect people to learn and grow if other people are doing the work for them? So, I think that’s really the point of a lot of this. And, in relation to this book, it’s kind of like what you felt after reading Insurrecto. I am just all the more curious now about what I don’t know about Native American history, and I would like to go back and read more, ’cause there is so much that’s just a big question mark.

T: Yeah, so much. Once again, Vina, great chat about an amazing book, There There by Tommy Orange. I know when we started this podcast, I was not aware of a number of Native American, indigenous authors that have been published. And to remedy my ignorance, I’ve done some research and there is a plethora of authors, so that feeds into my surprise and, quite frankly, slight annoyance as to why we aren’t reading and hearing more. But, I’m really glad that we’ve chosen this book. So, to our listeners out there who are looking to read more, we will have curated a list of resources and some books* that we hope to read next in our downtime, which will be available for you to look through on our blog on Medium.com/the-lift-up-podcast. And, if you have your favorite Native American authors that you want to share with us, please interact with us through our Instagram page @theliftuppod.

V: And to close out, we do want to give you a heads up on what we are reading. So, for August, to celebrate Jamaica’s independence, we’ll be talking about Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn. And, September’s episode will focus on the two versions, the US and UK versions of The Good Immigrant collection of essays curated by Nikesh Shukla. So, feel free to send us questions through our Instagram page, again @theliftuppod, and thanks again for listening to us here at The Lift Up Podcast.

*Discover other books by Native authors (click on links below to purchase titles through The Lift Up’s shop on bookshop.org):

• Cheyenne Madonna by Eddie Chuculate (fiction)
• An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (nonfiction)
• Louise Erdrich’s fiction: Love Medicine series (including Tracks and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), The Night Watchman, The Plague of Doves series (including The Round House)
• Abandon Me: Memoirs by Melissa Febos
• Joy Harjo’s poetry collections: An American Sunrise: Poems, How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975–2001, In Mad Love and War; and her memoir Crazy Brave
• Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson (fiction)
• Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World by Linda Hogan (nonfiction)
• Shell Shaker by LeAnne Howe (fiction)
• From the Hilltop by Toni Jenson (fiction)
• The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong by Stephen Graham Jones (fiction)
• Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (poetry, listener recommendation)
• Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot (memoir)
• Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (fiction)
• House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (fiction)
• Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
• Winter in the Blood by James Welch (fiction)

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