Authors Life

Tommy Orange is a Native American author from Oakland, California. He was born on January 19, 1982 to a white, christian mother and a father who is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Orange played roller hockey from the age of 14 to 24. He played at a national level. At the age of 18, Orange began playing music. The music was a way for him to express his passion for discovering who he is, learning about his culture, and identity. After graduating from high school, Orange completed a four year degree in audio engineering at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He continued his education and earned a master in fine arts at the same institution. Orange now teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. 

Orange was hired at Gray Wolf Books in San Leandro. During his time of work he developed a passion for reading. He began reading books about Native Americans and their struggles with identity, sense of belonging, and their many hardships they faced on a daily basis. Authors like Ocean Vuong and Kaveh Akbar have had a huge impact on Orange’s perception of poetry and his ability to interpret and understand poetry. Vuong is a Vietnamese author who immigrated to the United States. His works explore the ideas of identity struggles and intergenerational trauma (all common themes of Tommy Orange’s works). As Orange’s passion for reading grew he became interested in writing. Because of his passion for reading, Orange’s leap to writing made sense and felt natural. 

While Vuong and Akbar had a major impact on Orange and his writing journey, Orange’s influences are certainly not limited to just those two authors. Orange claims the Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian multigenre author creating works from novels to theater, has played a major role in outlining his writings. Lispector’s works often include identity struggles and the complexity of living for oneself, or living authentically. Similar themes can be found in Orange’s writing. Another notable author is Terese Marie Mailhot. Similar to Orange, Mailhot’s works explore substance abuse, violence, neglect, and the impact of intergenerational poverty, trauma, and genocide. Other notable influences are Andrei Platonov, Denis Johnson, Louise Erdrich, Roberto Bolaño, and Haruki Murakami.

Although many Native American authors have greatly influenced Orange in his writings, Orange has a resentment toward a common theme in many Native American stories. In many literary works, modern Native Americans are restricted to reservations. Many novels, poems, and essays create the idea that modern Native Americans live solely in reservations. However, Orange being an example, many Native Americans live off the reservations, living in cities and urban areas. This growing frustration with this literary canon inspired Orange to write a book about urban Native Americans. Thus, Orange’s novel There There is set in Oakland, California in order to depict the challenges faced by modern Native Americans who reside in urban areas.

Orange’s inspiration for his novel There There was sparked when he was working in a digital storytelling booth at the Native American Health Center and also at a nonprofit founded by the University of California, Berkeley, called Story Center. His job was to record the stories of individuals and then send them off. While doing this work, Orange realized that "Native people are pretty invisible," and he needed to tell the stories of a group of people who were often overlooked and unrecognized. He wanted urban Native Americans "to see their own stories reflected in a bigger way". While Orange truly wanted others to hear the stories of urban Native Americans, his main goal was to allow the urban Native Americans to feel heard and seen. He said that it is hard to be a strong individual when you carry such a heavy weight of not belonging. Orange’s realization is reflected in one of his characters in his novel There There, Dene Oxendene. Dene’s goal is to record the stories of urban Native Americans at The Big Oakland Powwow. Similar to the work of Orange, Dene will then create a large blog of the Native American stories. 

Orange’s novels are widely recognized as influential not only to urban Native Americans, but all Americans. His novels allow a largely overlooked community of people to be seen and understood by their peers. Naturally, Orange has received numerous awards for his novels. In 2018, Orange received the John Leonard Prize, an award given to authors for their first book no matter the genre. In 2019, he received the PEN/Hemingway Award, which is an award for an author’s first novel that tells short stories of different characters. Orange also received the American Book Award for the same reason he was awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award. There There also received nominations for other recognitions, including the Audie Award for Multi-voiced Performance, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and two from Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Fiction and Best Debut Goodreads Author.