Alumni Book Club: There There by Tommy Orange

The Center for Social Concerns is hosting an online book club for alumni of our programs and courses. Join us to talk about books that engage issues of justice. We’ll do one book each meeting.

Register now to discuss:

There There by Tommy Orange
Tuesday, June 18, 7:00–8:15 pm ET

Hosted by Dr. Connie Snyder Mick and Haley Beaupre ‘10

This 2018 novel was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years. The publisher’s website describes it as “a wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows 12 characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.”

Among the characters is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil is coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American — grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism

There There is a book with “so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation,” according to The New York Times.

The first 15 people to register will be sent a free book!

Please share this with friends who are alumni of the Center. Space is limited. Registered participants will receive a Zoom link to participate.