Wandering Stars: A novel

When I read the first pages of Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There, I was instantly gripped, emotionally and intellectually. I was thrilled to read Wandering Stars, which takes up the same characters, beginning with the inception of the family’s trauma at the Sand Creek Massacre.

A number of

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years ago I read a book on the Sand Creek Massacre that was commissioned by the United Methodist Church as part of their repentance and reconciliation with Indigenous people; the leader of the massacre was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church when he lead the attack on a group of women, children, and elderly men.

Orange begins his novel with a survivor of the massacre. Wandering and starving, he turns himself over to the authorities only to be arrested for a crime he did not do. He takes the name Jude Star after he is indoctrinated to be Christian and learns English.

Assimilation was one of the words they used for Indians becoming white in order to survive, in order that they might not be killed for being Indians.
from Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

The next generation finds Star’s son Charles taken to a residential school with the purpose of destroying Native culture and erasing its history. After leaving the school, Star and fellow student Opal Viola try to build a new life. But generation after generation carry inherited trauma, each struggling with issues of identity, lost heritage, and substance abuse. The latest generation includes Orvil Redfeather, who was shot while dancing in his first Pow Wow, as told in There There.

It is an engrossing read with wonderful characters and storytelling, and a disturbing read as we are immersed in the experiences of these characters and are reminded of the horrendous acts against humanity that shaped our country.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

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This sequel to Native author Tommy Orange's brilliant 2018 debut novel There There stands up well next to the original - at least, the second half does. The first half recounts the difficult lives of Sand Creek Massacre survivors, their passages through the notorious Carlisle Indian School, and the

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family's migration to Oakland. The second part deals with the aftermath of a shooting at an Oakland Powwow, the conclusion of There There, when young teenager Orvil is left mortally wounded and addicted to painkillers, and his grandmother, great aunt, and two brothers are almost as devastated and unable to return to their prior modicum of happiness. The novel's focus on addiction and a life of recovery also demonstrates the strength generated by family love and acceptance and by friendship and by music and by simply living outside. We are solidly in the heads of grandmother Opal, Orville, and his younger brother Lony, and the pages so strongly convey their highest hope and deepest despair.

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A bit less focused than the author's first book, but both the historical and relatively contemporary portions are well crafted, moving, and full of fascinating characters.

This was not an easy novel for me to read, but at the same time is engrossing and important. It’s full of raw, uncomfortable truths, heartaches, addiction, depression, but also gives us stories of recovery, family, perseverance, and hope.

I had to skip and skim through the first third, knowing

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about the history of violence and repression and genocide, with all the horrible things that happened to Native Americans and still continue to happen, with all the horrors I didn’t have the nerve to read in detail.

The remainder of the book, the story of the family built by the two sisters Opal and Jacquie, the two "grandmothers" for the three Red Feather brothers, was heartrending but beautiful.

Orange has the skill to weave his stories together while sometimes skipping from character to character, from time to time, or place to place without, somehow, ever breaking continuity.

Much happens inside someone’s head, in a stream of consciousness in the first person, or even with their words told by an outside observer. Much is told skillfully in dialogue that shows more than the words themself say. Orange is instructing us while entertaining us, in ways that just feel right.

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What does it mean to be an oppressed minority in a land where your people have lived for centuries? How can you contend with a government bent on your extermination and stealing your homeland? How can you define an identity when the dominant group fails to recognize your culture and traditions or

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sentimentalizes them for entertainment? Can you attain a sense of belonging from family ties and ancestral connections? Should you actively rebel or passively check out with substance abuse? Echoes of these questions arise repeatedly in places where versions of genocide have been practiced. In this remarkable novel, Tommy Orange focuses on how these questions reverberate in the Native American community.

He views the issues through the lens of one indigenous lineage—Star/Bear Shield/Red Feather—and follows it over a century and a half. He begins with the unprovoked and brutal massacre of indigenous people by US troops in 1864 at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. He follows this atrocity by telling of the unjust incarceration of Indians under inhumane conditions in St. Augustine, Florida, and their re-education at Indian schools, where Native children often were physically, sexually, and emotionally abused under the guise of forced assimilation. Although the telling of these events is important for understanding the historical context of the story, this half of the book is less nuanced than the latter that deals with descendants living in Oakland, California. This part takes up where Orange’s previous novel ended—with the random shooting of Orvil while dancing at a powwow. The matriarch, Opal, is now caring for her ne’er-do-well half-sister, Jacquie and her three grandsons, Orvil, Loother, and Lony. This part of the novel follows these characters as they contend with the myriad of issues facing indigenous people today.

Orange uses a non-linear structure with frequent shifts in narrative style and perspective. Moreover, he reiterates his themes in multiple contexts. Although these approaches can be unsettling for readers, Orange succeeds in creating fully formed and nuanced characters along with enough action to be fully engaging. One can’t help but leave this novel with new insights into the complex nature of life as a Native American in the United States today.

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All the Indian children who were ever Indian children never stopped being Indian children, and went on to have not nits but Indian children, whose Indian children went on to have Indian children, whose Indian children became American Indians, whose American Indian children became Native Americans,

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whose Native American children would call themselves Natives, or Indigenous, or NDNS, or the names of their sovereign nations, or the names of their tribes, and all too often would be told they weren’t the right kind of Indians to be considered real ones by too many Americans taught in schools their whole lives that the only real kinds of Indians were those long-gone Thanksgiving Indians who loved the Pilgrims as if to death.

Honestly, one of the best books I have ever read. I worried Orange could not match the brilliance of There There. It turns out he topped that book. This is being billed as a sequel to There There, but mostly it is not exactly that. Parts are both sequel and prequel to the last book. There there had such a clear plot, but this, not so much. This is a bigger picture look at how Indgenous Americans started and got to where they are now than it is any sort of There There series book.

Certainly a lot of the specific events are set in motion by the events of the Powwow in There There, but also it becomes clear that event is part of a chain of events, really indistinguishable from a chain of events that have been happening since Europeans landed on American shores. The nonlinearity of this book is one of its strengths, much of this is manic and uncomfortable, and that feels right. This approach to illustrating the abnegation and extermination of Indigenous American culture, and also, of course, of Indigenous Americans should not be linear, and it certainly should not be comfortable. I was surprised to find it had a bittersweet but hopeful ending. Every living thing needs to adapt to survive, but as long as we don't allow that adaptation to disappear us there is hope for survival. This is a a book about survivors, who hold on to their essence against all odds. but who also lose many very important connections to things and people no matter how hard they fight.

I read a lot so some books, even ones I enjoy a great deal, are mostly forgotten. That is okay. Forgetting plots or characters does not mean I did not retain things of value from those reads. But though that forgetting does not bother me, reading a book like this that I know will stay with me, likely forever, is an experience beyond those others, and is truly a privilege.

I listened to the audiobook but also got the Kindle so I could go back and read sections. That worked well for me. This was read by several narrators, and I thought all but one were very good, and even that one was adequate. The language here though is so often perfect and utterly unexpected that I wanted to spend more time with it than audiobooks allow. If you are a fan of great prose make sure to read this in print, or at least do as I did and give yourself access to the print version even if you listen to most of this.

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