Program Description
Event Details
The United States is turning 250 years old in July, and we are celebrating with a special book club highlighting American classics, new and old, in literature. May's pick: There There by Tommy Orange.
The book is about twelve Native Americans who come to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxedrene 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 Frank has come to find his true father. 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 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.
Tommy Orange delivers a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. 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.
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
March: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
April: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
May: There There by Tommy Orange