Tommy Orange’s “There, There” Chosen to be 2020 “One Book, One Philadelphia” Selection

By Levi Rickert - October 20, 2019 at 08:16AM

Published October 20, 2019

PHILADELPHIA  — The Free Library of Philadelphia and the Mayor’s Office “One Book, One Philadelphia” has chosen “There, There” as its 2020 book selection. From January 22 to March 18, 2020, nearly 100 events and programs in Philadelphia will center on Tommy Orange’s award-winning novel. Orange, 37, is a tribal citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

Set against a backdrop of sacred traditions, historical violence, and the metropolis of Oakland, California, Tommy Orange’s award-winning debut novel is “a comic vision haunted by profound sadness” (Louise Erdrich). There There is a multi-voiced epic of 12 Native characters whose lives intertwine across the urban landscape in ways they may not yet realize. They’re all headed to the Big Oakland Powwow and toward a crescendo of sacrifice, unspeakable loss, and loving heroism.

“There There,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is a New York Times bestseller and one of the New York Times’ 10 best books of the year. Author Tommy Orange received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize for “There There.” He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow, as well as a recent graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Tommy Orange was born and raised in Oakland, California.

Tommy Orange spoke to a standing room only crowd at a reading in Chicago. Native News Online photograph by Levi Rickert

Celebrating its 18th season, “One Book, One Philadelphia” is a signature program of the Free Library that promotes literacy, library usage, and civic dialogue by encouraging the entire greater Philadelphia area to come together through reading and discussing a single book.

 

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