Community Book Club—There There

Are you looking to connect with others? Do you love reading all kinds of books? If you answered yes, the Community Book Club is for you!

This month’s book is There There by Tommy Orange. 

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and national best seller, There There is a wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows 12 characters from Native communities who are all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow—and are all connected to one another in ways that they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind; Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory; and 14-year-old Orvil, 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

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. It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down—full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

The Community Book Club meets via Zoom, beginning August 17. 

To register, send an email to community@iit.edu, and you will receive the meeting credentials.