Let’s discuss the theme of endurance. Charles Star, right before he died, thought about how tired he was of enduring. Where else do you see both that strength and exhaustion in his descendants? Later on, when his daughter Victoria Bear Shield is learning about him through his letters, she reads, “We belong to what we are the way a song belongs to the singer, my heart is a runner and my soul is a winter . . . but in another part of the letter he is saying we don’t belong to the earth, but that we are the earth” (106). How does this letter express Charles’s endurance? What do you think Victoria learned about her father? And herself?
What questions do you have for Tommy Orange, with whom we will be in conversation on March 21st at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST?
This is from Opal, who is considering what her lineage has gone through to still be there:
"Surviving wasn't enough. To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person."
She decides that what makes their existence more than mere endurance is their culture, which has survived despite all the efforts to erase it. "The culture sings. The culture dances. The culture keeps telling stories that bring you back into them, take you away from your life and bring you back better made."
I am still working through the book as well. Off topic but still wanted to share - I found the book's music playlist - Tommy Orange's Playlist for Wandering Star (title conspicuously missing an S). Too good not to share. If this was already mentioned I missed it.
There’s tremendous endurance in so many of these characters. Orvil—my goodness. Living with a bullet in his back, for one thing. And enduring through his addiction, because surviving life with an addiction takes endurance. And then it seems he’s had strength in recovery. His grandmothers endure. Opal with her nose-to-the grindstone approach to life. Jacquie, who’s determined to endure sobriety.
I feel it so deeply when Tommy Orange writes in both There There and Wandering Stars that the Native people are still here, even though so many non-Natives seem to think they’re not. What must that be like, when you’re Native, to grow up like that?
Whenever I read any books about characters whose cultures and races are different from mine (mine was the default when I was growing up), it brings me again and again to the realization that it must be so exhausting to have that constant internal dialogue about one’s own race and place in the world. Tommy Orange conveys it so well.
The act of enduring seems to be the weight that they all carry, all the characters in the book from past to present. From Jude to Orvil, Lony, and Loother. They’re all carrying so much all the time.
My question is not fully formed and I am not finished with the book but I am wondering about the experience of sexism within Victoria Bear Shield’s girlhood community. It stood out to me that her father allowed her to sing at religious ceremonies as a child when other older women typically were not?
endurance: "we are the earth" feels to me the ultimate, deepest endurance...across time and generations, past and future, from the core of the earth to the furthest expanses of the universe. maybe it's charles' final (only?) call for hope he wants to ensure is passed down. i think victoria learned that capturing and sharing story and knowledge was important to charles, and she learned for herself the importance of story and knowledge...on page 107 "their stories are what you are made of" and thus, it is important to her to "be sure your daughter knows about this box, these pages."
two questions to choose from, if either of them are of interest for tommy orange to answer:
1. it was cool to hear about the ways you and kaveh akbar supported each other when sharing pages. could you talk about the way kiese laymon's approach to writing, his reads, his input shaped any parts or aspects of your book?
2. you've been on book tour for a minute now, can you share either the most moving or most surprising encounter or story you heard from a reader about the impact of your book on them?
finally, thank you! before starting "wandering stars", i read the acknowledgements. i teared up when you thanked us readers for giving "their own precious time in this life to read this." thank YOU for being so generous with your own precious time in your life to grace us with your gifts, your energy, your way of being.
Well - I finished the book last night. Re - read the first part. I don't really consider a book read until its been read three times - so there are things I am sure I am missing. The first time reading a book can be disorienting. Have lots of thoughts and questions.
In regards to endurance - well - I think it is interesting to look at substance abuse and the educational system through the Native lens. Crucial. It seems to me that the criticism of erasing memory is quite important feedback for the educational system as a whole. By erasing memory one loses a sense of self needed for independence. Erasing memory leads to dependency. Dependency is the spectrum of addiction. These are thoughts my brain started looping on after reading about memory castles in Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Learning about memory castles in contrast to looking at how Native memory has been erased leads me to believe that the education system does simulate dependency and thus addiction. Certainly the art of memory has fallen by the wayside in my own educational experience.
I am very curious to know if Orange has explored Memory Castles in his exploration of the impact of the educational system on memory and identity?
In regards to addiction and this book - I like how at the beginning of the book Orange says "For anyone surviving and not surviving this thing called addiction." I like the idea of reframing addiction in terms of dependency and abuse cycles. One of the biggest problems I see with addiction is reframing the way we see it - and I love how Orange explores addiction through the lens of generation trauma and modern structures - specifically the educational system. . It seems to me that we can so demean people by using their addictions against them instead of seeing the whole structural problem and I like that Orange does that - look at the cultural structural problems of addiction as they evolve.
In a way I almost think endurance is an interesting word to describe the journey when there doesn't seem to be a choice. What struck me was how the bullet fired into Jude travels into each and everyone of the characters and how each character struggles to survive that bullet and how that survival changes over time. What was really interesting to me from a technical perspective was how the execution of the gun being fired and us the reader following the trajectory of the bullet was executed.
I would be curious to know how Orange as a writer went about pulling off the emotional impact of a bullet traveling through multiple people separately and simultaneously. I noticed how the dominoes were used, but there were many other techniques I noticed and I would be curious how he went about the execution.
Something else that piqued my interest was toward the end where Minimalism in music helping with addiction? I would be curious to know more of Orange's thoughts on this.
Finally - my favorite question to ask writers - which is probably inappropriate for our conversation coming up is - have you had a near death experience? Did your perception of reality change? How did it impact your writing? And concurrently - a more inappropriate of a question to ask - but what is the greatest freedom you ever experienced and how did that impact your writing? These are inappropriate questions but I get such interesting answers to them with writers who deal in trauma.
I have more thoughts and questions - but I will leave it here. Looking forward to conversation tonight.
Endurance is such a good point of entry into discussion of this book. I keep thinking of the two meanings of endurance. There is the weight of all the characters have had to endure--both what they consciously recall having suffered and what lives in the part of memory our wiser selves keep us from accessing so we can, well, endure, as well as the part that lives on in lineage.
And there is the other meaning of endurance--lasting existence. We see this in the exploration of the way "mainstream" culture wants to relegate Native existence to the past while it so clearly is present, enduring. Maybe the way we stretch from the end of "There There" way back to the past before returning to its ending point and stretching out into the future is a metaphor for this theme, this meaning of endurance--like it points to how time is not necessarily linear, of how what the characters have had to endure also endures.
The question makes me want to go back to the beginning and think more about Victoria and Charles and Jude before him.
Thank you, Roxane, for putting Tommy Orange and these books on my radar.
The "We are of the earth" line really stood out to me as it connects directly with how I understand calls for Landback and has been a huge part of my own work in figuring out how to reclaim connection to my Métis ancestry without using it as a way to dismiss my colonizer and settler ancestry. Basically, much of this book captures the tension of living in a society that really likes to make hard and fast categories while being a complex, multi-faceted human being.
A lot of what I felt while reading this was the deep grief of what colonization strips away, whether known or unknown, but also a sense of possibility of creating something new based on the things we discover and reclaim.
Reading this book brought me back in touch with a lot of the feelings that I felt in active addiction. It takes so much strength to endure the relentless abuse of drugs and alcohol. Then there is the especially difficult road of exhaustion that comes with recovering from the epigenetic impact of ancestor trauma. There is a reason so many people give up. It's important to acknowledge that for many people in active addiction, and the characters in this book, substances and alcohol are tools for survival - not destruction. Unfortunately, many do not find other means of survival.
I have a lot of questions. I'm curious about his red road of recovery -if he identifies more with Jacquie or Orvil's approach to recovery.
This is from Opal, who is considering what her lineage has gone through to still be there:
"Surviving wasn't enough. To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person."
She decides that what makes their existence more than mere endurance is their culture, which has survived despite all the efforts to erase it. "The culture sings. The culture dances. The culture keeps telling stories that bring you back into them, take you away from your life and bring you back better made."
One of the lessons of this book.
I am still working through the book as well. Off topic but still wanted to share - I found the book's music playlist - Tommy Orange's Playlist for Wandering Star (title conspicuously missing an S). Too good not to share. If this was already mentioned I missed it.
https://spotify.link/cTcnquyE6Hb
There’s tremendous endurance in so many of these characters. Orvil—my goodness. Living with a bullet in his back, for one thing. And enduring through his addiction, because surviving life with an addiction takes endurance. And then it seems he’s had strength in recovery. His grandmothers endure. Opal with her nose-to-the grindstone approach to life. Jacquie, who’s determined to endure sobriety.
I feel it so deeply when Tommy Orange writes in both There There and Wandering Stars that the Native people are still here, even though so many non-Natives seem to think they’re not. What must that be like, when you’re Native, to grow up like that?
Whenever I read any books about characters whose cultures and races are different from mine (mine was the default when I was growing up), it brings me again and again to the realization that it must be so exhausting to have that constant internal dialogue about one’s own race and place in the world. Tommy Orange conveys it so well.
The act of enduring seems to be the weight that they all carry, all the characters in the book from past to present. From Jude to Orvil, Lony, and Loother. They’re all carrying so much all the time.
My question is not fully formed and I am not finished with the book but I am wondering about the experience of sexism within Victoria Bear Shield’s girlhood community. It stood out to me that her father allowed her to sing at religious ceremonies as a child when other older women typically were not?
Alternatively, I wonder if Tommy Orange has ever heard the song “Wandering Stars” by Portishead: https://youtu.be/-XrGo5_6nig?si=clR4Y6sqL8caMi4n
endurance: "we are the earth" feels to me the ultimate, deepest endurance...across time and generations, past and future, from the core of the earth to the furthest expanses of the universe. maybe it's charles' final (only?) call for hope he wants to ensure is passed down. i think victoria learned that capturing and sharing story and knowledge was important to charles, and she learned for herself the importance of story and knowledge...on page 107 "their stories are what you are made of" and thus, it is important to her to "be sure your daughter knows about this box, these pages."
two questions to choose from, if either of them are of interest for tommy orange to answer:
1. it was cool to hear about the ways you and kaveh akbar supported each other when sharing pages. could you talk about the way kiese laymon's approach to writing, his reads, his input shaped any parts or aspects of your book?
2. you've been on book tour for a minute now, can you share either the most moving or most surprising encounter or story you heard from a reader about the impact of your book on them?
finally, thank you! before starting "wandering stars", i read the acknowledgements. i teared up when you thanked us readers for giving "their own precious time in this life to read this." thank YOU for being so generous with your own precious time in your life to grace us with your gifts, your energy, your way of being.
Well - I finished the book last night. Re - read the first part. I don't really consider a book read until its been read three times - so there are things I am sure I am missing. The first time reading a book can be disorienting. Have lots of thoughts and questions.
In regards to endurance - well - I think it is interesting to look at substance abuse and the educational system through the Native lens. Crucial. It seems to me that the criticism of erasing memory is quite important feedback for the educational system as a whole. By erasing memory one loses a sense of self needed for independence. Erasing memory leads to dependency. Dependency is the spectrum of addiction. These are thoughts my brain started looping on after reading about memory castles in Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Learning about memory castles in contrast to looking at how Native memory has been erased leads me to believe that the education system does simulate dependency and thus addiction. Certainly the art of memory has fallen by the wayside in my own educational experience.
I am very curious to know if Orange has explored Memory Castles in his exploration of the impact of the educational system on memory and identity?
In regards to addiction and this book - I like how at the beginning of the book Orange says "For anyone surviving and not surviving this thing called addiction." I like the idea of reframing addiction in terms of dependency and abuse cycles. One of the biggest problems I see with addiction is reframing the way we see it - and I love how Orange explores addiction through the lens of generation trauma and modern structures - specifically the educational system. . It seems to me that we can so demean people by using their addictions against them instead of seeing the whole structural problem and I like that Orange does that - look at the cultural structural problems of addiction as they evolve.
In a way I almost think endurance is an interesting word to describe the journey when there doesn't seem to be a choice. What struck me was how the bullet fired into Jude travels into each and everyone of the characters and how each character struggles to survive that bullet and how that survival changes over time. What was really interesting to me from a technical perspective was how the execution of the gun being fired and us the reader following the trajectory of the bullet was executed.
I would be curious to know how Orange as a writer went about pulling off the emotional impact of a bullet traveling through multiple people separately and simultaneously. I noticed how the dominoes were used, but there were many other techniques I noticed and I would be curious how he went about the execution.
Something else that piqued my interest was toward the end where Minimalism in music helping with addiction? I would be curious to know more of Orange's thoughts on this.
Finally - my favorite question to ask writers - which is probably inappropriate for our conversation coming up is - have you had a near death experience? Did your perception of reality change? How did it impact your writing? And concurrently - a more inappropriate of a question to ask - but what is the greatest freedom you ever experienced and how did that impact your writing? These are inappropriate questions but I get such interesting answers to them with writers who deal in trauma.
I have more thoughts and questions - but I will leave it here. Looking forward to conversation tonight.
Endurance is such a good point of entry into discussion of this book. I keep thinking of the two meanings of endurance. There is the weight of all the characters have had to endure--both what they consciously recall having suffered and what lives in the part of memory our wiser selves keep us from accessing so we can, well, endure, as well as the part that lives on in lineage.
And there is the other meaning of endurance--lasting existence. We see this in the exploration of the way "mainstream" culture wants to relegate Native existence to the past while it so clearly is present, enduring. Maybe the way we stretch from the end of "There There" way back to the past before returning to its ending point and stretching out into the future is a metaphor for this theme, this meaning of endurance--like it points to how time is not necessarily linear, of how what the characters have had to endure also endures.
The question makes me want to go back to the beginning and think more about Victoria and Charles and Jude before him.
Thank you, Roxane, for putting Tommy Orange and these books on my radar.
The "We are of the earth" line really stood out to me as it connects directly with how I understand calls for Landback and has been a huge part of my own work in figuring out how to reclaim connection to my Métis ancestry without using it as a way to dismiss my colonizer and settler ancestry. Basically, much of this book captures the tension of living in a society that really likes to make hard and fast categories while being a complex, multi-faceted human being.
A lot of what I felt while reading this was the deep grief of what colonization strips away, whether known or unknown, but also a sense of possibility of creating something new based on the things we discover and reclaim.
Reading this book brought me back in touch with a lot of the feelings that I felt in active addiction. It takes so much strength to endure the relentless abuse of drugs and alcohol. Then there is the especially difficult road of exhaustion that comes with recovering from the epigenetic impact of ancestor trauma. There is a reason so many people give up. It's important to acknowledge that for many people in active addiction, and the characters in this book, substances and alcohol are tools for survival - not destruction. Unfortunately, many do not find other means of survival.
I have a lot of questions. I'm curious about his red road of recovery -if he identifies more with Jacquie or Orvil's approach to recovery.