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Tommy Orange

June 14, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+0

Free
Tommy Orange reading from

There There

published by Alfred Knopf

Not since Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Orange’s There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career.Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle’s memory. Edwin Black has come to find his true father. Thomas Frank has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions–intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path.
Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking–Tommy Orange’s first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. A glorious, unforgettable debut.

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California.

Praise for the work of Tommy Orange:

“When Tommy Orange first sent me a chapter of his novel, There There, I read it and marveled. I then read it aloud to my wife. And then I emailed and called my closest writer friends. I said, ‘It’s here. That book I’ve been waiting for. It has arrived.’ Tommy Orange has indeed arrived. And his debut novel is a beautiful, dangerous, sad, poetic, and hilarious revelation. Set in Oakland, California, There There is truly the first book to capture what it means to be an urban Indian—perhaps the first novel ever to celebrate and honor and elevate the joys and losses of urban Indians. You might think I’m exaggerating but this book is so revolutionary—evolutionary—that Native American literature will never be the same.”
—Sherman Alexie

“There, There is an urgent, invigorating, absolutely vital book by a novelist with more raw virtuosic talent than any young writer I’ve come across in a long, long time. Maybe ever. Tommy Orange is a stylist with substance, a showboater with a deeply moral compass. I want to call him heir to Gertrude Stein by way of George Saunders, but he is even more original than that. This book will make your heart swell.”
—Claire Vaye Watkins

“This is Tommy Orange. Remember his name. His book’s gonna blow the roof off.”
—Pam Houston

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Details

Date:
June 14, 2018
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+0
Cost:
Free
Event Categories:
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http://www.citylights.com/info/?fa=event&event_id=3196

Organizer

City Lights Books
Phone:
415-362-8193

Venue

City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Ave
San Francisco , CA 94133 United States + Google Map
Phone:
415-362-8193
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