This is an astounding literary accomplishment I highly recommend. I recently posted a review on Goodreads which I seldom do, and thought I'd share it here.
"There There" opens with a true account of the so-called Indian Wars. A look at the underside of our rewritten history. You will never again feel the same about Thanksgiving.
In 1621 when the
colonists invited the chief of the Wampanoags to a feast, it wasn't a
thanksgiving meal. It was a land-deal meal. And two years later when there was
a similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship, "two hundred Indians
dropped dead from an unknown poison ."
And so the slaughter begins.
In 1637 several hundred Pequot gathered for their annual Green Corn Dance. "Colonists surrounded their village, set it on fire, and shot any Pequot who tried to escape. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a feast in celebration and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving. Thanksgivings like these happened everywhere, whenever there were what we have to call successful massacres."
These are just two examples Tommy Orange relates to shine the light on what really happened four-hundred years ago, continuing (in a more 'civilized' manner) through the nineteen hundreds to present day. His is a voice never heard before.
Writing of the plight of the urban Native American, the story centers around twelve characters in Oakland, California struggling to reconcile their identity with what they know of their ancestral past (this land was once ours). For various reasons, they travel to and converge at the Big Oakland Powwow where their stories connect in a climatic way.
This is a gut-wrenching story that grapples with our painful history in a never-before published fashion, laying bare what was done to fulfill the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. I think it should be required reading in schools and universities across the country.