Tommy Orange
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange is both a sequel and a prequel to Orange’s novel, There, There. It begins in the past by exploring the lineage of Orvil Red Feather, the high school student shot and badly wounded in the powwow that ends Orange’s first novel, There, There.
Wandering Stars opens with the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado where the army slaughtered and mutilated members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Jude Star, a teenager, narrowly survives the massacre and is incarcerated in a prison castle in Florida where he feels the full effect of the policy of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” His son, Charles, is sent to the abusive Carlisle boarding school. His way of coping with the experience is through drugs. His partner, Opal Viola Bear Shield, gives birth to their daughter, Victoria Bear Shield. Opal is the grandmother of the half -sisters, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield and Jacqui Red Feather.
Opal and Jacqui raise Jacqui’s three grandsons, Loother, Orvil, and Lony Red Feather. This is the same Orvil who was hit by a stray bullet while dancing in the powwow. Opal assumes care-taking responsibilities for her sisters’ grandsons, providing them with a loving home to return to—something denied their ancestors. But the challenge in helping them survive and keeping them safe is daunting.
Spanning over 150 years, the novel alternates between first, second, and third person points of view to capture the different perspectives, different time frames, and different angles of the same experience. The characters struggle with identity, dislocation, poverty, and drug and alcohol addiction. This kaleidoscopic portrait illustrates that the effects of trauma, dispossession, and attempted erasure of a race are transmitted from one generation to the next. Trauma is generational. The root causes of drug and alcohol addiction are traced to the deep wounds that go back decades. Characters struggle to learn about their culture, their past, who they are, where they came from, and what happened to their ancestors. The novel also stresses the important role stories play in establishing identity and culture. It explores the issue of who has been denied voice in historical records and from whose perspective the history has been recorded.
Tommy Orange’s novel is a powerful and scathing indictment of the systemic genocide and colonization experienced by Native Americans whose ancestors were massacred and who experienced compulsory dislocation and forced assimilation. The effects of these brutal policies continue to haunt subsequent generations.