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.