Nimona

love when authors and writers take tropes and character roles and put their own spin on them, sometimes even subverting them. Specifically in genre works like fantasy. In fact, I am trying to do the same thing with my own fantasy novel. Nimona takes the familiar hero and villain roles and twists them. They are, in fact, roles within the world of the comic that need to be performed.

There is a broad trope of hero vs villain, not only in fantasy novels, but generally in story where there is a clear “good” character, often the one the audience associates with. Though they might make mistakes, it is always clear to the audience that “good” character always has the best intentions. The “hero” and protagonist are not conflated in Nimona. We follow the “villains” in the comic’s world whose antagonist plays the role of the hero. Stevenson made these two conflicting characters, Ballister and Ambrosious, fit into their roles as much as possible in order to then subvert them.

Visually, Ballister fits his role, with darker features—hair and armor—and facial hair that one would expect of a villain. He also has a scar across his right eye and has a mechanical arm. Disabilities, especially if visible and physical, is traditionally an attribute given to the villain as a way of othering them. Ballister very much hits all the typical checkpoints of what a villain will look like in a fantasy setting. On the other hand, Ambrosious has all that a hero should have. His armor is yellow—golden—with blond hair, abled bodied and just a very pretty person. No scars on his skin and holds himself up. Even the names express their roles. Lord Ballister Blackheart against Sir Ambrosious Goldenlion, names that are color coded and obvious to the reader. Gold is associated with valor, nobility, and when paired with a lion the connotation is almost glaring. It is the same with black, and the author’s choice to use those names was, for me, a hint that something wasn’t right because it was too obvious. We as readers follow Ballister’s perspective first, indicating that he was who the reader would be making a connection to. I expected a subversion of tropes because Stevenson presented them so obviously that I felt it had to be done on purpose.

With a genre filled with traditional tropes and character roles, I was excited to read Stevenson’s graphic novel that utilizes the tropes themselves in order to create an interesting and refreshing story. With readers already familiar with these associations placed on who the hero or villain is, even if they are not avid fantasy readers, helps to create an impact when revealing the twist. The author makes the readers place certain expectations on the characters based on superficial details and slowly breaks those expectations. So when Ambrosious asks to meet with Ballister and then places his hand over his, an actions so heavily coated with intimate/romantic significance, I was ecstatic. What I enjoyed about Nimona is that the roles are exactly that, roles that Ballister and Ambrosious perform without any depth to them. But they have a history together, playing roles given to them, and seeing how Stevenson used those roles as the story progressed made Nimona much more fun to read.

I was nervous about Nimona. When the villain, Ballister Blackheart, is depicted as disabled, I wanted to throw my Kindle against the wall while murmuring something about lazy tropes and boring boring boring. Nimona and I did not get off on the right foot. Luckily, it soon became clear that Ballister Blackheart was only a villain because he was labeled as such by the Institution and that we the audience were supposed to root for him as the true hero of the work.

 Nimona is the book The Cautioner's Tale wants to be. It's funny because they work with similar themes--a corrupt and oppressive government that must be defeated against all odds by brave crusaders who recognize the system for what it is. It's not a particularly original idea. So why did it fall so flat for me in The Cautioner's Tale but work so well in Nimona? I think a big part is that Nimona sets us up for certain tropes (like the disability trope I mentioned above) and then it subverts those tropes. The Cautioner's Tale doesn't bother to play with subversion and so misses the chance to provide the reader with a lot of fun.

Where else does Nimona play with tropes? One place is with the character of Nimona herself. In some ways she seems almost Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl-ish. She has a past, obviously, and the backstory she gives Ballister is sad. But she is playful and childish...until she isn't. Until it becomes clear that Nimona isn't Nimona but is a shapeshifter more powerful than any being in the kingdom. The sidekick is more powerful than the supervillain.

That leads, of course, into the ideas of heroism and villainy Nimona addresses. I'd argue that one of the major themes of Nimona is the theme of semantic power. The people in control (the Institution) get to decide who's a villain and who's a hero. They even have a training program for heroes! This power muddies the meaning of morality--are heroes moral? Or are heroes simply obedient?

One of the most entertaining ways Nimona plays with tropes and expectations is in its setting. Generally fantasy, especially fantasy involving dragons and magic, has this medieval Tolkein-esque feel. Language and technology is stuck in the Middle Ages because who needs the internet when you've got dragons? Nimona subverts this, too, by giving us a technologically advanced society that also has magic and dragons and heroes and shining armor.

Nimona was fun because Nimona took our expectations and gave us something a little different. It pointed the finger at these tropes then tweaked them.

Color in Nimona

    Let’s talk about color choices folks. One of the first things I noticed in Nimona, was that Stevenson chose to contrast her characters with their backgrounds. What I mean is that for most of the panels, the background is pretty dark which allows the characters to stand out in the scenes. Especially Nimona who is the most colorful character of the bunch I would argue. If we look at a scene such as the one on page 119 where Nimona loses her powers, we see that both her and Blackheart are set starkly against the charcoal gray walls of his lab. This heightens a readers perceptions of actions and movements performed by the characters. Nothing is really going on in the background that we need to pay attention to. All of our focus is drawn to our protagonists.

    Now I want to juxtapose my ideas on this contrast with another scene. On page 179 we see Goldenloin and Blackheart in the dungeon/cell where Blackheart is being kept. My attention was immediately drawn to color in this scene because we see the character’s backgrounds shifting rapidly between the same charcoal gray color, and the orange hue of the cell door which seems to be a plexiglass or force field. The charcoal gray blends well with Blackhearts suit, while Goldenloin being thrust against that orange color seems to blend as well. All through the scenes the panels switch perspective from Blackhearts position to Goldenloin’s. I was enthralled by the color choice in this scene, specifically the choice to parallel these characters with their backgrounds in one way or another. I started to read the barrier between the two as an extension of Goldenloin, meaning that the thing keeping their friendship from mending was his refusal to admit that he ruined Blackheart’s career as a hero. This all culminates for me on pages 184 and 185, when Goldenloin finally apologizes for what he did. In these panels, and more specifically on the middle panel on page 185 we see Goldenloin sitting outside the cell, he blends in with the cell wall, and we see Blackheart next to him through the cell wall, the same orange hue. For me, this blending of color signified the mending of their relationship.

    In doing a close reading of this scene, I show only one example of the ways in which Stevenson uses color to deepen the threads she unravels in her narrative. In previous graphic novels we’ve looked at, we’ve been working with black and white, with work in shading as well, so maybe that’s why I was so focused on the way that color was working throughout the story. Coloring and the choices surrounding it are time consuming, there had to be a reason for the author to decide to include color, as well as the choice to use high gloss paper instead of other paper. The cell scene between Goldenloin and Blackheart, and the contrast between characters and their backgrounds throughout the novel helped me understand why color was necessary and how color was working. It adds more than just aesthetic pleasure. It helped to focus my attention and deepen my understanding of the characters as I was reading.

Nimona - Weaving Comedy and Tension with Character- and World Building

So something that I noticed about Nimona is how Stevenson is able to combine comedy and action while maintaining tension with moments of character-building as well as strengthening/deepening of character dynamics and world building.
Some scenes that I noticed this weaving in included the panels on pg 79 in which Nimona and Blackheart have just returned from their bank robbery. The three bottom panels maintain a decreased level of tension from the previous page during their return to their lair and while Nimona is being, well, Nimona and so excited about their success, Blackheart's expression and interruption brings the focus onto the final panel in which Nimona's simple "oh" in respoonse to an arrow being stuck in her leg not only causes a slight increase in tension but does so humorously due to her nonchalant reaction as well as the lack of background in the final panel which draws the eye to first Blackheart's expression whose line of sight leads us to Nimona's expression whose line of sight draws us to the arrow in her leg and the blood leaking out of it. This moment while hilarious also leads us into the deepening relationship between Blackheart and Nimona with her being her with lines such as "You're such a GRANNY" (80) while he begins to show more and more concern for her well-being while Nimona continuously rejects any moments of sincerity with lines such as "so don't baby me, okay?" (81). Despite this, we still see their character dynamics continue to develop in the ensuing episode of playing World Domination (Monopoly) which is, again, hilarious, and I could discuss it further but ONWARDS.
Another moment in which we see the kind of world building/action/comedy/character dynamics is pg 110-111 in which Blackheart and Nimona have been spotted by the Institution's guards and Nimona is unable to transform (that kind of sounds like a Monty Python title, doesn't it?). The tension in this moment is fairly high considering that they're on the run and can't be caught or (as the reader knows) Nimona could be killed. However, in this moment, due to the snarkiness we get from Blackheart's dialogue and the use of ALL CAPS, humor is brought into the moment in order to create some world building in the form of where and how Nimona's shape shifting abilities can be outdone. This revelation that Nimona can possibly be stuck furthers the tension of the scene before more humor is introduced into the absurdity of the moment with the boy saying "Ma! There's a crazy old hobo here talking to a cat!" followed by the the mother appearing, broom-in-hand, "What hobo! Where!" despite Blackheart's attempt at explaining that he is a scientist and Nimona is in fact "a super-intelligent mutant cat" (111). In this moment, while the moment is comedic, it reminds us of the urgency of the situation and what's at stake if Nimona and Blackheart are unable to escape.
A final moment of humor despite tension, etc that I'm going to look at are the two panels at the bottom of pg 180. This is when Blackheart has been captured by the institution due to him breaking in to give the affected the antidote to the non-lethal poison during the conversation between him and Goldenloin. In the bottom left corner of pg 180, we're in the midst of a fairly serious conversation between Blackheart and Goldenloin and while the tension level is fairly low we get the information, once again, that Goldenloin blew up Blackheart's arm. In the next panel, we get that moment of humor of Goldenloin asking if he has to bring it up every time they talk in Blackheart's simple response of "yes" coupled with the facial expression of mouth set and eyes closed with his head turned away. Now, in this moment, while we don't necessarily get a whole lot more character development or world building or changes in character dynamics, this moment of humor leads us onto the next page in which we get more confirmation of Blackheart's previous jumping of Ambrosius' golden loins as well as finally what really happened the day Blackheart lost his arm and became the villain he was before Nimona came into his life. This then serves to give us both revelation and information about The Institution as well as deepens Goldenloin's character and motivations which plays into the finale of the novel in which I cried a lot.
There are definitely so many other moments that I could talk about, but these were ones where I thought the weaving that Stevenson was doing did A LOT of work and really took advantage of the visual form in a way that's both fun and makes you think and piece things together.



IN ADDITION, something that I think is really cool about this graphic novel is that the story of Nimona began as a webcomic before being published in the novel form (similar to Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu which began as a Tumblr webcomic and is now a two-volume graphic novel that everyone should read cough cough hint hint this is in the Mills Library you're welcome).

Discussing Nimona

         

Fashion, it's more than clothes

By Jamie Harper

In reading Nimona, I cannot help but be excited about the abundance of craft topics available for discussion, primarily in relation to the visual choices made by author Noelle Stevenson. Stevenson presents a mastery of visual storytelling in Nimona, from her use of the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, negative and face space, as well as colour palette, form, and what she decides to include within a cell.

Each of Stevenson’s characters is given a defined palette of colours, that rarely varies throughout the narrative, with few exceptions. Titular character Nimona appears in simple greenish maille and burgundy tunic, both of which provide a nice compliment and contrast to her red/pink hair. Her boss Ballister Blackheart, the so called “villain” of the story, is introduced in a rather standard suit of grey armour and the traditional red cape and black hair commonly associated with the “dark side,” his nemesis/love interest Sir Goldenloin is presented in stereotypical shining armour, and the secondary characters of the director and Dr. Blitzmeyer are both shown in muted, grey or white. The rare exceptions to these uniforms come when the characters are facing moments of character growth or development, visually signalling the change occurring within them through their representations without (all save the Director, of course).

Blitzmeyer becomes more invested, caring, and “human” at the end of the novel, rather than the stereotypical absent minded mad scientist, when she arrives to check on and care for Blackheart, after being confided in by him (p. 214) and listed as his emergency contact (p. 251). This humanizing and interpersonal connection is signaled to reader through her sudden appearance in a soft green tunic and deep brown cape, colours typically associated with nurturing and the restorative powers of the earth.

Goldenloin, perhaps the character with the greatest development arc, experiences several outfit changes, beginning with page 127, when presented with the mech-enhanced armour given to him by the director. This new suit of armour is only minimally different in design from his original, and remains within the muted golden tones previously associated with him, with the addition of the green shade Stevenson seems to be using as an indicator of power. Yet, it also represents the Director and the Academy’s attempts to bolster him, turning him to the moralless “robo-cop” they desire, presenting him with his first stumbling block as he realises all that glitters is not gold. His next moment of character growth and accompanying costume change occurs after defying the Director, landing himself demoted to guard duty (p. 180), and a much simpler, duller version of his original appearance. At this moment, Goldenloin is humbled by the Academy, before Blackheart as well, but we begin to see him reconsidering his position within the social hierarchies and alignments. Following this, we see Goldenloin’s first true instance of vulnerability, when he admits to cheating in the joust and costing his friend his arm (p. 182), the admission accompanied by the change to a flashback version of Goldenloin, wearing a much more muted, soft tunic and shirt, reminiscent of a british schoolboy uniform. This regression to past fault and vulnerability marks the real turning point for Goldenloin, spurring him to alter his stance within the Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart from lawful to neutral good. After this realignment, the next time we see Goldenloin in a new outfit is at the very end of the story on page 256, when we see him in a green shirt, and brown pants waiting for and embracing Blackheart (The same, neutral, nurturing and natural colours seen on Blitzmeyer).

Opposite to Goldenloin, Blackheart is perhaps the character with the least amount of arc, with more of a social rebranding from villain to hero. Blackheart’s outfit rarely changes within the narrative, the most common exception being his disguises, typically a cloak and raised hood within the same colour pallette as his main suit of armour. These disguised periods, however, signal moments, not of growth, but of Blackheart revealing himself, such as on pages 104 through 105, when he begins to loosen up at the science expo. Like the others, Blackheart does have his moment of that soft green and brown combination, when he is shown waiting for Goldenloin to wake up, talking with Blitzmeyer, and looking for Nimona (p. 251), his found family, as it were. Following this, we then get to see the physical expression of Blackheart’s new place within society, as we are shown him standing with first Blitzmeyer, then Goldenloin, in a new outfit that combines the darkness of his original suit of armour with the gold and white of Goldenloin’s.

For Nimona, we have perhaps the most interesting form of outfit change (general shape shifting not withstanding), in that we see her hair colour change one time, but her entire age and bearing change twice. In terms of her hair colour, for a brief moment in chapter 9, we see Nimona with bright purple hair, rather than her usual reddish pink, with Blackheart making note of it, as Nimona begins to close herself off to him after temporarily losing her powers (p. 110). In chapter 10, we see another change in Nimona’s hair, in that she has shaved off her fluffy ear tails and blunt bangs, giving her face a much more harsh look with her new angled, almost mohawk-like bang. This further symbolizes her distancing of and annoyance with Blackheart, and herself. The next time we see her, Nimona is trapped within the Jaderoot containment system built by the Director, a new shade of yellow and darkened shadows brought to her face by the glass, followed by her transformation to the hurt little girl inside of her. This major transformation happens twice within the narrative, once under Nimona’s control as a means of manipulation (p. 25), and once out of her control (p.226). The first time, we are presented with a young nimona, pink haired and determined, in control as she spins a lie about being given her powers by a witch, while the second, we see the truth, a little girl, copper haired and scared, in the white shift reminiscent of a hospital gown, symbolizing both innocence and hurt. This is the moment where Nimona has her biggest character shift, in that in her pain and fear, she becomes angry and mistrustful, lashing out at everyone around her as she clearly suffers from PTSD flashback to previous abuse (p. 226). Like Goldenloin, Nimona’s flashback to a younger age and a more formless, lighter coloured outfit is reflective of her vulnerability, but unlike Goldenloin, Nimona struggles to give into this vulnerability, eventually disappearing.               

Nimona

            The cells of Nimona are largely simple and high in number considering the page size of this book, but I know this was originally a web comic.  The first two pages clearly illustrate the back and forth of dialogue between Nimona and Ballister.  Later, the cells are larger and there’s more diversity, but one of my favorite techniques is on page 96.  Ballister and Goldenloin meet in a bar and just as Goldenloin delivers the final insult that pushes Ballister to start the fight, the cell is split between them.  Mainly where their faces line up, a white gutter runs between them, showing a disconnection between them that leads to violence.  Later, on page 184, Goldenloin finally apologizes, over the physical barrier of Ballister’s prison.  I liked how each moment between them with strong emotions had these similar elements of barriers, real or felt.  

            From the beginning, Nimona disrupts.  She disrupts Ballister’s life, challenging the quaint rules of his gentlemanly game with Goldenloin, to insert a new, more vicious brand of evil.  On a larger scale, she disrupts genre.  She’s an unexpected character in a comic that relies on our mythologization of medieval life. 

The Lord of the Rings is responsible for a lot of fascination with medieval lore, and its dominance in fantasy writing that continues to this day, so it’s easy to assume a lot about this comic when we see a character that looks like a knight.  We accept Ballister’s plan to threaten, but not kill, until Nimona suggests otherwise.  Unlike a lot of villains in fantasy, and in classic comics, Nimona is happy to kill people.  Despite this, she’s also very likeable, when compared to Ballister and Goldenloin, even if she is often used to show how good Ballister really is. 

It can be dangerous for a genre to get too ingrained in its ways, something that fantasy and newer fairytales can easily fall victim to.  I think that’s why Game of Thrones has been so successful, it takes a familiar genre and breaks rules we didn’t even know we had become accustomed to.  In Games of Thrones it feels as if the heroes die, the knights are serial killers, and the princesses are never saved.  Nimona gave me the same feeling.  The person I like the most is homicidal, the villain is a sweet, fatherly figure who hates to hurt people, and the brave knight is a sneaky liar. 

Nimona shines a light on the roles and obstacles the other characters give themselves and offers a chance at change.  She is change itself, after all.  She also seems to zero in on inconsistencies and short comings of the characters around her.  When she gives Ballister a crown and he says he doesn’t want to be king, she interrogates his short sightedness.  Just like one dimensional villains in comics that run for a long time, the villain here has no real long-term goal or ambition that they have truly considered. 

Later, when Ballister is truly living up to his fatherly vibes and trying to shepherd Nimona in her child form to the other part of herself, it’s easy to fall into expectations of a man saving a little girl.  I knew this couldn’t happen, that Nimona wouldn’t let the story revert to fairytale clichés.  Instead, two knightly men abandon her to save themselves and she is able to unite her forms successfully on her own.  She never stops challenging what is “supposed to happen” and hijacks a simple story to be something larger than any of the other characters can handle, creating a story that questions and goes beyond the neat, well contained amusement of the child’s fairytale. 

-Iris

Reasons to Read (anything)

There are many angles from which to analyze There, There, so I wanted to focus on how Tommy Orange gives his readers breadcrumbs: details that connect across chapters.

As I spent time with this book, I asked myself about how Tommy Orange manages the inherent subjectivity of each reader. What makes a person keep listening? How does Tommy Orange capitalize on whatever that is? How do I start to notice the breadcrumbs that I tend to always overlook, so that I could hook a different type of reader than myself -- or do I want to do that?

These things make people turn pages:

1. Plot, tension, conflict/resolution, characterization… (reminds me of middle school Language arts)
2. The story is personal to author and therefore, reader
3. The story is not just personal, but it is politically impactful and/or historically significant (for example, what does it mean to write stories about Native American people in the modern era when people’s stories are inextricable from the past? Is the story not “authentic” if it is forged in a new way? Reminds me of Lony and Loother’s conversation on p. 131 -- “why can’t we just make up our own way?”)
4. The prose is nice, and maybe the reader wants to bathe in beautiful language
5. The structures are unique and the author is doing something innovative with how they frame storytelling (shifting perspectives, a nested narrative of a filmmaker making films about the other characters, whose chapters represent that part of the film)
6. The reader feels “smart,” like a detective, because they are picking up on the devices the author uses -- clues in each chapter that link back to other chapters… (for example, details about Jackie Red Feather and Harvey and Opal all come together in different chapters, not just all at once)
7. The reader can trace themes (for example, Tommy Orange writes each character with some sort of screen or mirror through which they see/analyze their reflection, or at least informs the reader about their appearance… ALSO there is a lot of referencing to addiction, the singularity, internet & isolation)

Anyway, I think my aim of this post was to investigate the net Orange casts, and how. I want to figure out what makes a story worthwhile to be written, and listened to, when nearly everything about what makes a person listen is a slippery subjective thing.

HJ

There There

The influx of characters presented in There There was a surprising way to weave the complex narrative together. These narratives were told through different generations, perspective, and expressed different motivations to come together at the powwow. The surprising part, to me, was the choice to have characters I would have simply deemed as antagonists have their own section, like Harvey, Bill, and Octavio for example. We are shown their characters through one person’s perspective, but then they are given the chance to show their perspective. Not necessarily to redeem them, I think, but to show their circumstances because they too are affected in one way or another because of who they are. Not only was keeping up with the amount of characters that came and went in different sections somewhat difficult, but the narration itself would switch from first to third person, and if one specific character’s section was in first person, it could be in third person for their next section. Adding to that, the narrations weren’t in chronological order either as some would take place in the past. At first I felt as if Tommy Orange didn’t want the reader to feel comfortable and settle in one style, but then it came together as more like Dene’s story project. There isn’t one narrative or story that dictates the novel as they are all parts of one ongoing community that is suffering because of circumstances they have little to no control.

I love reading through the child perspective especially when dealing with heavy subjects. Like it has been mentioned in class, rather than describe the battlefield or war, it is more effective to depict the red shoe. Along that same strand, a child’s narrative provides (or maybe is) that red shoe. Orange’s choice to have Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield be the eyes to depicting the Occupation of Alcatraz was a great choice and one I appreciated. Orange did not state what the political movement was in the beginning, but he did leave blatant clues. He made sure to provide the date, January 1970, the phrase, “that prison,” and that the family was staying on an island (page 48). The reader may pick up on those hints, but rather than focus on the general he zooms in on one young girl whisked from her home, who has to sleep in prison cells. We as readers pick up on what she doesn’t, which heightens the tension, especially when it’s done through the first person narrative.

Opal’s next section switches from first to third person and we are not as bound to her perspective. She’s older now with an understanding of what happened to her. Rather than have the scene with Ronald  in first person, it is done through a flashback and filtered through older Opal. However, there are parallels in these two sections. In the first, Opal leaves her bear Two Shoes behind in his bad shape, she “left him like that” (page 58). This was after Jacquie had been raped by Harvey. When she’s older and remembering, as Opal sleeps with the bat, she “had taken to holding the thing like she’d once held Two Shoes for comfort” (page 166). Then she knocks Ronald out and also leaves him on the ground, as she did Two Shoes. The similarities are meant to remind the reader of the earlier section and compare. Opal knew what was going to happen whereas before, she didn’t understand what Jacquie was referring to earlier with Harvey.  These two sections were interesting to compare, especially with the changes done in perspective. There were other characters whose sections go through the same change, but Opal’s struck me as the most intriguing because it went from that child perspective to a more detached, but more knowledgeable adult. Tommy Orange’s choices in how and when to shift are interesting and I look forward to discussing them in class.

x

There There - Time Shifts and Tension

So in thinking about There There, I keep trying to truly understand the concept of "angle of discovery" and all of the aspects it encompasses since, not only are there POV shifts in terms of who is telling the story but also when it's told in first person (page 43 in Opal's pov for instance) versus third person and even in second person on a couple occasions (Thomas Frank's section on page 208), the narrative takes us through different angles of discovery with shifts in time and when the character who is narrating is in time. While the shifts in time happen throughout the novel, I'm going to focus on "Part IV Powwow" to kind of walk through how it functions and what it did to me as a reader.
Okay, so we start off with Orvil arriving with his brothers in the coliseum and him getting ready for the Grand Entry and we're in his body as he dances and then looks to see if he can find his brothers in the crowd. IMMEDIATELY, we're put into Tony Loneman who is on his way to the powwow and getting off BART at the right stop after his interaction with the white lady who only knows how to state the obvious so she can tell the story later - at this point, it feels like we're pushed back in time a bit but it's unclear if this is happening concurrently with the Grand Entry or not. Regardless, when we're in Blue's pov next, IT'S THE MORNING OF and way before Orvil and his brother were on their way to the powwow (which occurred in part III). From here, we're pushed forward in time again to Dene setting up his storytelling booth and then Opal's perspective since she wants to see Orvil dance but doesn't want to alert her grandchildren (and this entire time, I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop because Orange has set up the narrative to this point that we KNOW what's gonna go down at the powwow as much as we would like to see Edwin meet his dad and Blue to meet her mom and Jacquie to be with her family again 'cause she's dealt with a lot of shit). BUT THEN we're pushed back to the morning of AGAIN in Edwin's perspective with them arriving and bringing the safe with the gift cards into the powwow which HURTS 'cause it makes sense to bring it in now but WE KNOW. So from here we're kept in the morning of with Calvin's perspective before being pushed into THE NIGHT BEFORE with Daniel's perspective which hurts in a different way as well as with Jacquie the night before at the hotel with Harvey (which is a moment I could unpack, but for now I wanna focus on how these time shifts impacted me by mapping them out a little too much maybe).
From here, we get into Octavio's pov the day of during the powwow which increases the tension because WE KNOW WHAT'S COMING. This tension, at least for me, became broken into a different kind of tension with Edwin because we're faced with this extended moment of whether Blue will meet Jacquie and when she does will she say, "hey I think you're my mom" and address the question that has been threaded throughout the narrative of, who am I and what makes me Native? Am I a "real" Native or a phony? This tension remains unresolved as we shift back into Thomas Frank's pov which, I *think* is happening concurrently because it ends with the sounds of someone screaming which increases the tension of what we know is coming and is sustained in Loother and Lony's section which ends the same - with "what they think is the sound of people screaming" (264).
This tension is then both broken and sustained in Daniel's section because of how the action is removed from the coliseum through the VR goggles while we also get that sense of doom and OH NO with the interaction between Daniel and his mom and how "it's almost sad enough, the sound in her voice, to make him want to leave the drone up there, leave it all alone and just go eat with her" (266). That interaction, while so short brought forward a lot of the emotions that had built throughout the narrative for me and allowed them to catch up within all of the cumulating tension in part IV.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE BIG BAD.  Blue's section here is where a lot of the momentum picked up, it was a small signpost that started out with her awareness of the safe and the detail of Edwin eating the sunflower seeds shell and all and immediately throws us into Dene who hears the shots and is saved by a pole in his booth. This is then contrasted with Orvil, Calvin, Thomas Frank, and Bill who all feel the ground and feel themselves as they are hit by the bullets. Four successive sections held at that level of 10 tension through the action we are witnessing.
This tension is held in a different way by Opal, Jacquie, and Blue acting as the ones who find those they can and get them out of the coliseum and to the hospital. Slowing down for a moment here, it was in these few sections between Orvil and Blue, that while I couldn't help but turn the page because a part of me wanted them all to get out, I knew how it would end and that there were characters like Calvin, Thomas Frank, and Bill who we don't get to see receiving medical attention and that, due to Bill's location, I questioned when he would be found. I knew this answer even as I read it.
Opal's final section, while it brought the tension down from a 10, it created tension through information (Opal's observation of everyone there in the hospital waiting room - pg 284) and revelation (her voice and Two-Shoes voice being "hers and not hers [...] it can't come from anywhere else. There is only Opal" - pg 285). The thing that kept the tension high here as well also came from her angle of discovery in that her narration came from the adult in the moment rather than an adult looking back so that while we had been given her history, we experience the eight swings of the door before never hearing the answer from the doctor.
Finally, we end the novel as we began it with Tony Loneman. Here is where the shifts in time within his section and his angle of discovery really interested me. We start with him back in time on the field as the first shots are being fired and we're given the play-by-play of what happened (is happening? Happened prior to the moment on the previous page but currently happening through the character of Tony) and time is slowed as Tony turns into a Kodiak that will not stop charging even after being shot multiple times. Time here speeds up as he grapples with Charles on the ground before being slowed down again as he sinks into the ground and becomes a child again. So here's where I think the angle of discovery is interesting because rather than it being the informed adult looking back, we have that child voice that recounts as the child while also coming away with some kind of understanding because of the bubbles and that question and statement (answer?) - "what are we? [...] you know. You know they're there [...] they're right there, Grandma, I can see them with my own eyes" (288-289) which is then followed by the play scene with the Autobots which I could unpack but I won't for now. In this moment however, I find it so interesting to then shift back into that moment as Tony is lying on the field and we're removed from time completely with the final line of "where he'll always be, even now it is morning" (290). This, in a way, makes me think about how in Flash Fiction this semester there are all these stories about writing and writers, but in a different way I think this final line made me aware of myself as a reader? But yeah, the way time is shifted around and played with had me thinking a lot because Orange had all these balls in the air and while we as readers may not have felt like we got to see where exactly they all landed it was clear that he knew it down to the moment in time and how as a writer, while there is the time the narrative takes place within and the time it took to both write and read the book, he kind of existed outside of all that time.

Finding the Distorted Self in There There

Tommy Orange has a very impressive ability to keep the reader engaged while constantly throwing in new characters and new voices into There There. I found myself crying as all the threads folded into each other in the Powwow section, where suddenly almost everybody dies. I wanted Calvin and Octavio to be redeemed so badly, and I was so shaken when Orvil went down. What I found most impressive about this work was the thematic sense of self within all these narratives. There was self-destruction, self-actualization, and self-discovery amongst almost all the different voices.

My favorite character was Thomas Frank, although we don't hear from him as much, he has a significant moment. His chapter introduces the second person point of view into the narrative, which doesn't happen a lot in fiction, and it feels very ethereal and important. I don't usually feel that the voice means "me" when the "you" is invoked, and in this case, it felt distinctly that a voice from the other side, an elder, was imparting the wisdom about Thomas' driven rhythmic nature. To be into drumming from the stage of in utero, that's something. "Everything can be drumming whether rhythm is kept or strays. Even gunshots and backfire, the howl of the trains at night, the wind against your windows. The world is made of sound. But inside every kind of sound lurked a sadness. In the quiet between your parents, after a fight they both managed to lose." (210) Such poetic and evocative language used to describe the pull of the pulse. Thomas doesn't feel deserving enough to sing, but Bobby Big Medicine encourages him (I love Bobby). The dissonance in Thomas' body becomes resolved through the music, and the community. His self-actualization is marked by the drum, and his self-discovery is shot through with the stories from his past, how his parents met and came together.

Another important section for me was Edwin's where he is constipated and looking for relief online. His conversation with his mother is so sad and beautiful, where he defends his weight, and rails against her judgement: "Being big, you think about it all the time. You feel it. All those years, dieting all the time, you don't think that fucked me up? We're all always thinking about our weight. Are we too fat? Well, what I have going on comes with an easy answer, and even more so when I see my reflection in the mirror on the front of the fridge, which, by the way, I know you put there for my benefit." (73) It's such an incredible anthem for fat people, defiant and loud. I loved this for its self-defense, and I also put it in the self-actualization category. Also, the end of this section was incredible. Joking-not-joking about needing a crane to pull him out after he dies, and he tries several times to do a sit up and finally shits. It's perfect. I love him. I need to believe that he makes it after being driven to Highland Hospital. Even though we're left not knowing.

Another beautiful moment, in Bill Davis' section, is when he's regaling a cherished period of his past, "The games were all he had then. He had his teams, and they were winning, three years in a row, right when he needed it, after what felt to Bill like a lifetime of losing...it was a really good time to be from Oakland, to feel that you were from that thing, that winning." (85) I'd credit this as self-preservation, being able to cling to this sense of self from a larger community success. I was interested in this part because a lot of characters gain a specific strength from the Native community, and belonging there when they don't seem much to belong elsewhere, yet Bill finds this peace with his teams. I appreciate this moment too for the poetic nature of winning: he was AWOL, dishonorably discharged, hated America, hated life. But he finds himself in Oakland, and finds self-identification in the magic of a three years winning streak. Also in this section I love that he details all the books he read in prison. It's important he loves that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is entirely narrated by the Native American, but that the movie screws that up. The book is always better! He is so relatable with this review of his time incarcerated, and being able to make the best of life inside.

Octavio is the epitome of self-destruction. Whether it's going over to Sixto's house to possibly beat the shit out of him, or when he gets himself wrapped up in the Powwow robbery scheme, he's on a path and nobody can pull him off it. One of the most chilling moments in the novel was when they were all loading their 3D-printed guns in the bathroom: "The dread keeps going, moves out of him, like he had his chance with what it was telling him but he missed it, because just as he feels it a bullet drops and rolls out in front of him, out of the stall. Hears the squeak of shoes. Must be Tony here to get his bullets. Everyone goes quiet at the sound of the bullet rolling." (256) The part that's really ominous, and what really gets me, is that they are all about to kill each other in about half an hour. All of them are going to die. And they don't know it. And they're just thinking about that five thousand dollars. It completely breaks my heart. They are all loading these bullets that are going to go into each other, each in their own stall, their last moments before them. It's so dark. Orange gave them so many chances to steer out of this, but they each retreat to this moment. Even though none of them is a suicide, I find it to be a self-destruction they participate it, as, they are self-destructing as a generation. They never had a chance.

Shifting Characters and Views

             I’m going to focus on narration because the topic for the week is shifting strategies. There are a lot of narrators in There There. I lost count, tried to write them all down and still think I have the number wrong. What surprised me was not just the number of narrators but the shifts in perspective even among the same narrator’s chapters. Tony Loneman is the first character narrator after the prologue. His first chapter is told in first person. He talks about the drome, his propensity toward blackout violence, and we end the chapter with Loneman in regalia, “an Indian… a dancer” (26). Loneman’s second chapter comes late in the second part of the book, after the interlude. Loneman’s second chapter is in third person. Suddenly, the “I” has gone and we get “he,” what “he’ll” do. In Loneman’s first chapter, the reader is very much in his head, experiencing the world the way he does. But in the second chapter, it’s as though we are disembodied. We are no longer in Loneman’s head but watching him swing the socks full of bullets “under the moon, under the looming coliseum walls” (143). I love that Loneman ends the book. His perspective is the first and last that we read. His story seems to be the anchor of the book. 

           This shift in point of view happens with other characters, too. A similar pattern happens for Calvin Johnson. His first chapter is in first person; his second in third person. Same for Opal. Other characters don’t receive this treatment. For example, Dene Oxendene has two chapters in third person, as does Jacquie Red Feather. What’s compelling about these shifts for me is not just the narration. We’ve seen books that shift character perspectives to tell two sides of a story. The first one that comes to mind is Bury What We Cannot Take from last semester’s craft class. We got multiple character perspectives but always from the same point of view for the same character. Orange is doing something completely different: shifting characters and points of view. What I ask myself is to what end? What is the shifting doing to the reader or the narrative?

          For me, the shifting perspectives and points of view served to disorient my reading experience. There were so many different voices throughout. It was difficult to focus on one alone. There isn’t a hero or heroine who emerges here, though a case could be made for Loneman emerging as a kind of heroic character in his last chapter. There There feels like an entirely communal story in which all the characters have a stake. I’m not entirely sure all the ways this perspective shifting is affecting the reading of the text, but I am super interested in diving into this book with everyone on Wednesday and in hearing what others’ perspectives were while reading this unique narrative. 

There, There and Pacing

Pacing has been much on my mind lately. One of the students in the undergrad creative writing class I TA for is having awful trouble figuring it out, and I've been trying to explain it in every way I can think of. I've been looking for examples of good pacing and bad pacing. I've been hypercritical about pacing.

The pacing in There, There is interesting. The story is, of course, told in sort of montages, so we're just getting glimpses of the characters lives, but sometimes these glimpses span years. A lot of the "chapters" are sort of backstory, preparing us for the big event, the most active part of the story, The Powwow. The powwow section of the book spans pages 227 to 290. WOW! That's 22% of the book covering about an hour in real time! He's taking us through all of this movement, these hugely tense moments, and he's spending a long time giving us every detail, giving us a blow-by-blow of every characters' thoughts and feelings and actions. And it's tense. It's scary. And the detail doesn't bog it down. Of course, a lot of the reason he can go on with the same scene for so long is because it is told from several points of view, but even with that, 63 on one scene is a lot! It is a lot to dedicate without boring the reader and it felt like proof that stretching out the details during important scenes, stretching out the action, can really improve the work.

I was interested in the details he gave, too, because they weren't just physical and emotional. There was backstory in the details, too. It was really moving. The way he did Tony's scene in particular got to me, his movement into the memory of his grandmother and a happy childhood moment with her moving forward to a peaceful death borne of violence and rendered in beautiful prose: "Tony needs to be light now. Let the wind sing through the holes in him, listen to the birds singing. Tony isn't going anywhere. And somewhere in there, inside him, where he is, where he'll always be, even now it is morning, and the birds, the birds are singing" (290).

Path lost, discussing There There

Path Lost

By Jamie Harper

I have to admit to struggling with this week’s read, as I experienced a lot of negative reactions to the underlying river of entitled masculinity that poured through the entirety of the narrative, from the predominantly male characters, to the misogynistic infantilization of the first female character introduced, and the re-connection of the second with her own rapist. All of which, to me, smacked of the influence of the white toxic masculinity, and how it has corroded the original ideals of Native cultures. In learning of the novel’s premise, I was initially enthused about reading a Native story about a variety of Native people, but was quickly let down upon beginning part one. The characters felt to me as if hitting the one note of the stereotypical “Indian,” just in slightly different amorphous forms of that feathered head Orange mentions in his prologue (p. 3). As I repeated in our last craft class, while trauma is an important topic and a part of life, it is not all that some groups of people experience. Women do not only experience sexual assault, Natives do not only experience substance abuse. There are other aspects to their lives, that are just as, if not more, important. And while I feel Orange had an excellent opportunity to show that, he chose to focus on the more “palatable” image of Natives that White people know best, the Tragic Indian.

The most hopeful characters in this narrative are Dene and Orvil, the two young adults seeking reconnection with the ancestry they never really knew, after growing up with adults who never really taught them. Something I identify deeply with, and wished was present more in this novel. But beyond these two boys, there is no true hope presented for the other characters, as if implying the future, and heritage, belongs only to the young and to the male. Both of which go against traditional Native norms (and this is not the first or only instance of this, as Bill also condemns “Gender fluid” attire, when Natives are amongst the first cultures to have recognized non-binary identities). It makes me wonder if Orange was, like most of his characters, heavily impacted by the White-man’s Disease and guessing at what it means to be Native, but rather than trying out different identities, experiences, and arc strategies for his characters, kept close to the gentrified version of a Native identity as built off the White ideal.  

From a craft perspective, this flatness of character building and character representation does not sting as much as from my personal perspective, but it does frustrate. Nine out of twelve characters are male, almost as many have issues with substance abuse, and save for any slang used by the younger characters, much of the dialogue carries the same tone and pacing in my reading, leading to the majority of this huge cast feeling interchangeable for me. I also tried to track the use of language placing us within the Native body, like the description of how Tony’s face “heats up and hardens like it’s made of metal” (p.17), as both a means of character development and Native representation/exploration, but after the first few chapters found any such descriptions lacking (which was surprising to me considering this book was originally on our reading list for our craft of the body class last semester). Perhaps the most interesting thing I noted in the craft of this narrative was Orange’s use of repetition and rephrasing throughout the entire novel, such as seen in his opening line on Page three.  “There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted...” This specific line reminded me of many Tribe’s traditional storytelling techniques, as well as the opening line in Thoreau’s Walden, in which Thoreau places his reader firmly in the location of his experimental self isolation from modern society. This, combined with the line on page eight about Indians belonging to the city, which belongs to the earth, gave me hope for an almost transcendentalist approach to Native spirituality and the world, but this too was quickly lost.

I suppose my feelings about this book are that it reflects a Native experience tainted by the White patriarchy as to become almost unrecognizable beyond stereotype, too far removed to tradition to be called Native other than Natives are the ones predominantly experiencing it. Which perhaps is Orange’s intent, and brings air again to the question of representation in media and how this affects real life representation and archetypes. What does it say about the literary world, and the world at large, that this novel, with its specific type of representation, is considered the new “it” Native novel?

    

Braiding in There There

    When I first started working through There There, I felt lost in the narrative. There were so many characters for me to remember with so many subtle connections to each other cropping up in different chapters in so many different ways. The story felt simultaneously cohesive and disjointed. Right when I felt like I was getting to know a character the author would move on to another one. Having the common thread of the powwow helped me orient myself in the story, and at the conclusion of the novel I was grateful for the jump in perspectives. This story feels like home for many complicated feelings. For me to work through that I have been trying to think through what it means for the novel to be structured in this way. Why feed readers fragments of stories from what feels to me to be a really high number of characters?

    First though, I want to talk about one section that stood out to me. The chapter told through Thomas Frank that uses second person narration instead of third person. The other chapters told through Thomas Frank’s perspective used third person, so why choose this specific chapter to write in second? Since Thomas’s chapters are introduced over halfway through the book I felt as though utilizing second person made me feel more bonded to Thomas’s character in a shorter amount of time. Each character we meet has to build a relationship with us quickly, but some of these characters, like Edwin or Opal Viola, get more space in the novel to tell their story. In Thomas’s case, and in order to feel the emotional impact that the author wants us to feel in Thomas’s final chapter, we need that second person narration. It made me feel a different relationship to Thomas than I did with any other character.

    Now, I spent a lot of time thinking about what it means for this story to resist being singular. What I mean by that is that, yes, this story could have been told through the eyes of one character alone, but allowing it to be multiplicitous decolonizes the narrative. One thing I took away from this book is that there are many ways to be indigenous, that while indigenous stories can have commonalities, they shouldn’t be homogenized. Say this novel was written entirely from Dene’s perspective. How would the story change? His voice would take over. The reader would see only flashes of other stories, and possibly feel less attached to them. Crafting the novel to be told by all of these characters simultaneously expands the readers preconceived notions of indigeneity. In particular, it highlights the importance of culture and community over the individual. By this I mean Orvil’s thoughts of his brothers during the shooting, Octavio’s sense of responsibility to his aunt and cousin, Opal Viola’s dedication to her grandson’s, Daniel’s loyalty to his mother, Dene’s belief in his project, and Jacquie’s return to Oakland. Braiding their stories around the powwow together instead of letting one of these voices stand alone reflects the strength of the community. Rope is braided to allow for stretch and compression, the fibers together are much stronger than they are alone, and that reminds me of the structure and theme of this novel.