The Indigenous Struggle Towards Self-Realization in 'There There' Misha Lubich College

“In the dark times/Will there also be singing?” is the opening question of Tommy Orange’s 2018 novel (10). From the very beginning, There There establishes itself in a time when traditions such as tribal singing are figments of the past for the Indigenous people; however, the answer is a resounding yes: “Yes, there will also be singing./About the dark times” (10). An urban native himself, Orange not only forebodes a crisis of identity but also implies that Indigenous forms of expression would be replaced by technology. Since being published, the novel is well-received by the literary community and, as many books on an oppressed group, is praised for more surface-level aspects such as its critique of colonialism and, most prominently, its redefinition of Native stereotypes. Almost all top reviews avoid addressing the psychological layer, the modern Indigenous experience, that New York Times’ literary critic and novelist Colm Toibin pierces. Unlike many critics whose focus was, Colm Toibin attempted to understand the novel within the frame of a modern Indigenous identity crisis: The idea of unsettlement and ambiguity, of being caught between two worlds, of living a life that is disfigured by loss and the memory of loss, but also...