Read Tommy Orange’s There There in February by joining the Book in Common Community Read Challenge in preparation for the author’s visit to campus on March 1.
Community Read Challenge 1
February 4-11
- Get your copy of There There (available at the Chico State Wildcat Store, The Bookstore (Main Street), Barnes & Noble, and through online sellers).
- Get your ticket for the Book in Common conversation with Tommy Orange, Tuesday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Laxson Auditorium ($20, free for Chico State and Butte College students)
- Read the prologue (p. 1–11), and engage with other readers by sharing your comments and reflections. Some questions to think about as you read:
- To prologue, as a verb, is “to introduce; to precede (something) as an introduction.” The events described in the prologue introduce the novel, but they also precede something deeper. What is this a prologue to?
- How does Orange use the three “heads” to situate the power of the stories we tell and hear?
- Orange writes that “we are the memories we don’t remember, that live in us, that we feel” and that “everything comes from something before” (p. 10). How does the prologue contest the way that the history of North America and California has often been taught?
- How does Orange introduce the urban experience and Oakland in particular?
Orange’s debut novel, There There, is “a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. One of The New York Times' top books of 2018 and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, There There shows us 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.” Learn more about the book, including resources, at www.csuchico.edu/bic.