Tommy Orange, an up and coming Native American author, from Oakland California, visited SFCC, Feb. 5, for a wire harp and red nations, Q+A event.

He was met with eager students and teachers from numerous classes, who had many questions for him and his book “There, There.” The book maintains at least 12 different perspectives. All detailing the days and history leading up to a fictional, albeit celebratory, cultural event, the book’s main setting of interest is the Big Oakland Powwow, and its surrounding areas. The subsequent bloodbath that occurs for the characters and readers, takes place in Oakland’s Alameda County Coliseum.

Orange stated the book was not based off of real people and that had he based it off of people he knew he would have felt it was like exploitation. Which most readers of, “There There” could agree enough of that practice has already taken place against Native Americans.Orange confessed his favorite character was Opal as she has more chapters than the rest.

An interesting connection between the book and Tommy Orange himself is that many of the characters are named after colors. Readers fall for a character named Blue and another character with the last name Brown. There were no last names, before the colonists the book explains.

Orange was then asked why he chose a specific city. “It makes the characters and the setting more compelling,” he said; This is especially true for Orange and his connection to Oakland and his characters’ same connection to Oakland.

Orange, during a break in questions, said he was surprised no one had asked why his book was so sad, because it was a question he often received. “The book resembles my life and to call it sad was basically to call my life sad,” Orange said. This earned a mixed reply from the audience; some sighed while others laughed in relation to Orange’s feelings. When Orange was asked if the story had a moral, he said “I don’t write that way” When asked if the story had an overall message, he said “Life is tragic,” and let the audience sit for a moment with this thought weighing on them. Then he expanded that his character’s preservation and survival shows that life can also be hopeful.

He was later asked if the ending was planned.  “I had conceptualized a tragic ending in a writing exercise years before I even considered this book,” he said.He was then asked why he left several characters without conclusions and he stated he likes open endings and for readers to come to their own conclusions about what may or may not have happened to them.

Orange was then asked how he felt about teams that use cultural representations as mascots. He said that most mascots are animals and objects, and asked the audience about local teams that practiced this insensitive process.

The Spokane Chiefs hockey team, and The Spokane Indians baseball team were then mentioned for this use of Native Americans as a symbol as if they were animals or objects when they are instead a people and you would never have a caricature of white people for a mascot, however, unlike other teams such as the Redskins, the Spokane Indians have approval from and are affiliated with the Spokane Tribe.

When Orange was asked if he had advice for other Native authors, he spoke on getting one’s MFA and dealing with rejection. “Nobody just gets published,” he said.

He was asked if there was more pressure to write the sequel, and Orange replied coldly that there was no new pressure that he hadn’t already felt while writing the first. Orange described his religious upbringing when he said his parents told him the most important thing in his life was his relationship to God and, he joked, “I was like 7.”

Orange said he felt proud that the book identifies the urban Indian experience. When asked why he chose the title he did, he explained this quote from Gertrude Stein: “What was the use of my having come from Oakland, it was not natural to have come from there, yes, write about it if I like or anything, if I like, but not there, there is no there there.” Orange further said that “There There” wasn’t meant to be thought of as the comforting connotation of the phrase.

In relation to the novel not being comforting, Orange said he chose gun violence to be the climax of the book, because Native history surrounds the idea that white men had guns and Native Americans didn’t and that was why they lost so horrifically.

A student wondered, “Was there anything in particular that gave you the idea to write the book? Like what made you start writing?”

Orange responded, “I knew I wanted to write a novel, I had always dreamed of the community growing up in Oakland growing up native knowing ‘that lifestyle’ was not really covered in other literature.”