Tommy Orange’s novel There There works to disrupt common ideas and stereotypes that Native Americans face in their daily lives. One of the biggest stereotypes that Orange rejects using novel is the idea that there is only one type of Native American, and this Native American lives on a reservation without access to modern technology. Through demonstrating how different characteristics, along with a person’s Native American identity, intersect to create diversity within the Native community in Oakland, Orange reshapes readers’ ideas of what a Native American is.
The diversity of Native Americans is seen right away in the first character of the novel, Tony Loneman. Loneman has a disability called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He says, “The Drome is my mom and why she drank, it’s the way history lands on a face and all the ways I made it so far despite how it has fucked with me since the day I found it there on the TV…” (16). Tony believes that his disability is a result of the history of the treatment of Native Americans in the United States. Not only does Orange use Loneman to show how Native American identity intersects with disability, but Orange also relates Loneman’s disability to the horrific treatment of Native Americans in the United States.
The character of Edwin Black is another example of how complex identities intersecting disrupt the idea that there is one type of Native American. Edwin Black is an Oakland Native American who has an addiction to technology. While he spends time on Facebook, Black reveals a large online community of more than 600 Native Americans (69). Typical stereotypes of Native Americans include individuals living on reservations without access to the Internet or even a computer. However, Black’s Native American background and his addiction to the Internet combine to allow readers to see an active population of Native Americans using modern technology even though Native Americans are not commonly depicted doing so.
Each character in the novel has different identity traits that shape their time as a Native American. Gender, disability, addiction, age, and body size all contribute to the characters’ experiences and intersect with their Native identities to create stories and lives that are vastly different between each character. While it is easy to assume that Native Americans are all similar to each other, a huge breadth diversity exists even just between 12 Native Americans.
This is very true and relatively refreshing--maybe not in the sense that nobody has done this anymore, but in the sense that we in the Indiana midwest don't get to hear about it often. I think there is something very interesting being said about the minority identity as well through this theme of intersectionality and diversity: it does not come in one color. Minorities aren't totally defined by their minority status, or even by their culture; they are their own person as well with their own identity outside of and beyond their culture. I feel that this idea is something that white society often likes to take away from people of color, or at least relegate it to the background; white leftists (the supposedly politically correct, sensitive, and culturally informed political group) are most guilty of this phenomenon, being so zealous in their celebration of minority culture that they forget that a "minority" is just a status indicator and not an identity. I think what you are describing Orange as having done in this book, showing both sides of that story, is an effective way to combat such generalized and ultimately toxic ways of thinking.
ReplyDeleteAnother character that stuck out to me was Thomas Frank. As the last character we were introduced to in the novel, Thomas Frank didn’t play a large role, but he also had intersecting identities that brought diversity to the cast of the book. He has a white mother and a “noticeably Indian […] dad” (216). Thomas seemed to struggle with his religion, as well, and creates a mashup of his mother’s evangelical Christianity and his father’s Native American spiritual religion that shows itself through his “Oakland-spun Christian evangelical end-of-the-world spirituality” (222). This sense of intersectionality prevails throughout Orange’s book, and because of the way society likes to put people in neat little boxes, many of the characters go through a sort of identity crisis. As mentioned in the blog post, Orange does this to show the differences between Native Americans, a group that faces a struggle because of stereotypes and expectations. I think one of Orange’s main points is to show that there are no requirements that a Native American must check off in order to be a “real” Native American. Native Americans don’t have to live on reservations, participate in all Native American traditions, or even know their whole ancestry.
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