collected
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
About 6 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 13 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to reconnect with the family she left behind, while Dene Oxendene records Native people's stories in Oakland after his uncle's death. Fourteen-year-old Orvil learns traditional dances from YouTube, preparing to perform at the Big Oakland Powwow. They are among twelve Native American characters whose overlapping lives lead toward the gathering, each negotiating family ties, inherited losses and what belonging means in an American city.
Angry, sorrowful and sometimes darkly funny, the literary novel opens with a historical essay before passing among narrators in first, second and third person. The structure asks you to keep track of family connections across separate stories. Addiction, suicide, sexual assault and violence are recurring, serious subjects.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Highly regarded
Somewhat. The prose is direct but also lyrical and fragmentary, while twelve characters’ overlapping stories shift between first, second and third person. Keeping track of family connections takes attention, especially as the narrative moves through a nonlinear structure.
The novel opens with a historical essay before moving among its characters’ stories. Expect that change in form, then give yourself time to connect the separate lives as they lead toward the Big Oakland Powwow.
Anger and sorrow shape the overlapping stories of family ties, inherited losses and belonging, with moments of dark humor. The tone is intimate and tense, and addiction, suicide, sexual assault and violence recur as serious subjects.
Strong violence, substance use and suicide recur, and sexual assault is a serious subject. Addiction is central to Jacquie Red Feather’s story as she tries to reconnect with her family after becoming newly sober; strong language is also present.
The Big Oakland Powwow brings the overlapping lives toward a shared gathering. Family, community and Native identity connect their stories, particularly the question of what belonging means in an American city shaped by inherited losses.
304 pages in the Vintage 2019 paperback edition.
Vintage · 2019 · paperback. ISBN 9780525436140.
About 6 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 304-page Vintage edition. Dense books can take longer.
Tommy Orange is an Oakland novelist and a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. His fiction brings contemporary urban Native life into contact with inherited violence, family entanglements, and contested ideas of belonging. He works through shifting voices and fragmentary accumulation rather than a single commanding perspective, moving between direct narration and lyrical passages. In There There, twelve Native characters converge on the Big Oakland Powwow as their private motives, kinship ties, and struggles gradually intersect. An account of sanitized Indigenous history widens the novel’s frame, while the approaching gathering and a planned robbery give its braided structure mounting momentum. Orange has also published short fiction and magazine nonfiction about Native life today.
