There There

by Tommy Orange

I believe the best kinds of novels have a balance of style and content, make you work while also moving you through the pages in a way that makes you want to keep going.

Two hundred Indians dropped dead that night from an unknown poison.

Realigning understanding to meet the horrors and deceits of colonialism

The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a feast in celebration, and the governor declared it a day of thanksgiving.

The Japanese mascot in Novelist as a Vocation (2022) named the Braves

We stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can’t leave a war once you’ve been, you can only keep it at bay—which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets.

Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. Convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take.

The trickster spider, Veho, her mom used to tell her and Opal about, he was always stealing eyes to see better.

Anansi

If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger.

Her mom said spiders carry miles of web in their bodies, miles of story, miles of potential home and trap. She said that’s what we are. Home and trap.

Morning Star.

Name of book two