Just finished your workday? Unwind from the day at our Monthly Monday Book Talk. We’ll generally meet around the end of each month to talk about a variety of books focusing on Historical Fiction, Foreign Settings, and/or Multicultural Stories. 

Our next title is There There by Tommy Orange which we’ll discuss on Monday November 25, at 6:15-7:15 p.m. in the Board Room (upstairs).
A novel that grapples with the complex history and identity of Native Americans follows twelve characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxedrene is pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle’s memory. Edwin Frank has come to find his true father. Bobby Big Medicine has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions–intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path.  Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking–Tommy Orange’s first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. 

Books will be available approx. 4 weeks before, at the Reference desk. Please contact Eleana at cordovae@waynepubliclibrary.org or 973-694-4272 ext. 5406 if you’d like to join.