[female announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provi part by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, re the alice kleberg olds foundation,ers, claire and carl stuart, and by entergy. [evan smith] i'm evan smith. he's one of fiction's rising stars. hit novel "there there" was called "an american epic" by the new york times and has won raves from coast to coast. he's tommy orange, this is overheard. [smith] let's be honest. this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem andover . let's start with the sizzleakbs are you gonna run for president? f i think i just got anfrom yo. this is overheard. (audience applause)

[smith] tommy orange, welcome. [tommy orange] thank you for having me. [smith] thank you very much for being here. wanna talk all about the book and talk all about you, but i wanna talk about the title of the book first. so i didn't actually get the reference until after that this is gertrude stein. [orange] mm-hmm. [smith] right? like you, an oaklander. is that the right way to say it? oaklandite? [orange] oaklander. [smith] oaklander. [orange] yeah. [smith] so gertrude stein famously said of oakland, "there'sere there." and this is your response, this is your rebuttal of gertrude stein. [orange] and it's also, i wouldn't put so much of the weight on gertrude stein as more on people who have sort of misused that quote. because she was just talking about her childhood home. [smith] very specifi bec [orange] and itt talking abo was developed over.e. so in her "everybody's" autobiography, somebody asks her, "why don't you write about oakland?" "there is no there there." she's just talking about her experience. and so peove used it to say oakland has no character. and thats more a reflection on

what people think of oakland or are trying to make oakland into an what her thoughts were. [smith] it may be as much a rebuttal of those people than of her. [orange] yeah. [smith] right. and oakland, as we'll come to in a second, is a character in this book. this book struck me, so i thought two thgs about this book. it's a portrait of america that we don't see and it's a portrait of americans we don't see. there is not, as far as it goes, a lot of native american literature or native american storytelling about the native american community in this country. in novel form. right? [orange] yeah, and, you know, specifically, whvie native people are in cities. this follows a dozen characters, in this book, and it really is about the lives of namericans in an urban environment, sort of detached from what you wou think of as the traditional environment in which these stories would be told. [orange] yeah. so, in the 1950s and '60s, there was relocation. so the u.s. government was encouraging people to move from reservations to major cities, and th happened.

and people came for lots of differe reasons. but when they came, even though it was sort of, the idea was that people would assimilate aninessentially disappeaities, and the culte and language would be sort of the step of era, rt but indian centers s up all over in every major city and all these different tribes from all over the country would come together and form community. those people had families, and so there's generations of people that have this background of, you know, having grandmothers that were born and raised in the city or having mothers that did. [smith] indian culture, though, despite this, has persisted. right? inditure is still a thing. [orange] yeah. [smitih] right? and in fact there's a very key, i think it was a key scene in this book, where there's a poww is that indian culture persists regardless of circumstance, regardless of setting,

regardle you know, is it old times, contemporary times, there is still something ve vibrant about this culture that you write about. and in your own life it continues to be a significant defining aspect. [orange] yeah, i mean it means a lot of different things. something that we've suffered from is the idea that there's one way toe indian, and often that means it's historicalfrom or it's tied to some specific tradition. and it just means, there's over 575 tribes, all with distinct languages and histories and ways of indian. so this was one, this was just one aspect of native culture and american life that i've never seen in books or in media. so i very much wanted to write into that lack. [smith] you are the child of a native ther and a white mo you self-describe or self-identify, ough, as native american. that's your own, and i mean that from the perspecve of your art.

you are a native american novelist. you view that identity as central to your art and to your place as an artist. [orange] well, you know,i wn before i was an artist. i grew up with my dad, very much knowing that i'm native. [smith] and you'd go back to his, go back to oklahoma with him, right? [orange] yeah. and it was just part of what i was. i knew i was sort e , you know, i was tho things. i'm biracial. but there was reallynothin. [smith] well, the fact is you point out in the book, you're as indian as obama is african-american. [orange] but there is no cultural side on the white side and there is on the native side. you know, my mom fell for my dad in a teepee in northern w mexico in the '70s. she was sort of a wandering hippie from oakland moand he was practicing ce in northern new mexico. so my identity has never been anything other than i know i'm native,

and my dad always made sure that we knew that and were proud of it. so i'm automatically a native author because that, you know, you can only be an author without any qualifying thing before it if you're white. you're just an author. otherwise you put the thing before. [smith] it's a little ridiculous that it has to be qualified. an author is an author is an author. although clearly, your own experience and your own identity is on every page in every paragraph of this book.. you've chosen to tell your story, this story, as opposed to me other story. [orange] yeah. [smith] i mean it's the oldest thing in the world, tell your story,? [orae] and i think, you know, i think again, it's a privilege of, specifically, white male authors to just tell any story, and if the just start talking about a protagonist and they have that guy go rob a bank and whatever, he survives most of the mountains and never brings up anything about his background. he has the privilege of not having to write anything in.

and e e audience, because we been reading white male authors for so long, will a'somatically assume hite and male. [smith] right. [orange] but if you're writing from your experience and, you know, i would never write a default person that didn't include my personal details. - so it's, yt of have to write against something that's been the default. you have to actively resist, otherwise you're sort of erased on the page. [smith] well, you become part of the problem at that point. but you know, in the case of white male authors, say, who clearly have dominated the landscape of letters for a long time, there are plenty of people who they read growing up in whom they see themselves, now or one day. but if you're a native author, there have not been a lot of native authors for you k to as mentors, role models, or to get a sense of how to do this. so who did yd growing up? what shaped and formed your thinking about your own art? [orange] i didn't read growing up. i wasn't a good student. i was into playing sports. i sort of actively resisted school.

and i became a musician when i was 18 and then i went to school for sound engineering, and i learned a lot of analog recording. this was right before the digital age ok over. [smith] good career choice. [orange] yh. [smith] right. [orange] pretty much right after i graduated, my skills were obsolete, and i got a job at a used bookstore and that's when i fell in love with reading, and what i was reading then was not based on a teacher's curriculum or anybody telling me what to read. i ended up reading a lot in translation and just a lot of scure stuff, and just followed my own instincts. and so-- [smith] your voice as an artist came from the ence that you had discovering other people's voices in these books. [orange]eah, exactly. i didn't end up reading a lot of native writers until i got into my mfa program at the ins of american indian art. [smith] is there something about native writers that is particular, in your mind? would you or would we, as non-native readers, say, be ablee in native writing

something that would call it out? range] no more than black writing would include ack experience or chinese writing would include chinese experience. 's only categorized a certain way because it's different than what the dominant-- [smith] characters, story, setting. [orange] yeah. it's great writing. the settings might be different d the characters' lives might be different. what literature can do and what novelcan do that i love is that, nmatter w, you can live through an experience and come to understand a story erd understand a people be no matter what people that might be. [smith] and if you create amazing characters, i mean i love orville redfeather, there are a lot of characters in this book, dolike i said about n we follow, i'm partial to orville redfeather, but if you encounter various characters, you can find aspects of yourself in them regardless of who these characters are. and i thgrk that's one of tht things about, these are memorable characters all in this book. it's a very vivid picture of life today.

is it the book that you set out to write i wondered about that. i wondered, because this book is also di not really told in a tonal. a to z linear narrative. in which the story is presented. it makes it actually a lot more interesting. it feels like a very modern book in that sense. is this what you intended? [orange] it is. yo, there were some craft choices that i knew before i knew what story i was gonna tell. i knew i wanted a prologue, 'cause i like the way at functions in a novel. you can kindf experiment with a prologue before you start the chapters and the story. i e ew that i wanted a whnch of povs of a whole bunch of different characters and have, figuring out while you read how their lives rsect and how that also, you know, how it relates to the arc of the whole story. these are just craft decisions. [smith] but i love this to crafty, processy stuff.ory. i love this. because it really, thesee verys that ultimately are crucial to the success of the book.

[orange] yeah, so, the idea, the idea came to me in a sinace moment for what thal book would be. i had just found out i was gonna be a father and i was driving with my wife down to l.a.-- [smith] well, i know you have a son named felix who's seven now? range] correct. [smith] so we're timing this perfectly. so it's like, eight years ago? [orange] yeah, he's about the sa age as the book. 'cause i thought of the idea before i started writininto it. and i didn't write into it for a year 'cause i was busy becoming a father for the first time. [smith] preparing. yeah, yeah yeah. [o but the idea just dropped into my head to have all these lives converge at a powwow at the oakland coliseum. juat was the basic premise, and i, you know, i spent the next six years after thting into it. or, you know, i didn't write for that first year, but after that, after waiting for a year, actual, you know, i really started waking up at five in the morning and i'd write after he went to sleep and i was working full time, so, i really went hard at it at first.

i can't really expt in exactly how i madel work, but over six years, you know, you just keep going at the same. [smith] yeah. oakland. so we've talout oakland a couple times, mentioned that oakland is the setting of this book, that there's a pivotal scene at the oakla coliseum, but really, oakland is all over this, oakland is a character in this book. why is oakland such an interesting place for you? i was trying to think, as i was reading this book, aboueaother works of art thatre oakland. and i thought "fruitvale station." right? the film from a couple years ago. and then i kinda drew a blank after that. am i not remembering something? [orange] well, there's two that you should watch where it represents oailand, they're terrific. it's "blindspotting" and "sorry to bother you." they just came out this year. [smith] oh, "sorbother you" oh, that's right! "sorry to bother you." i did see "sorry to bother you," i did not see "blindspotting you know, i didn't think about "sorry to bother you" as an oakland film where you, you know, you can't help but understand

that "fruitvale station" is an oakland film. so o as a character, talk about that. [orange] for me, it's home, and you know, i love it because it's where i grew up and it's what i know. you know, i can't, almost can't walk anywhere in oakland or drive around anywhere without it connecting to some memory, that's kind of what home is is, you know, where you spend the most time and where yoories are. but i was writing into the lack, again, you know, i didn't see any stories about natives in cities and i didn't see very many stories or novels specifically about oakland. so i wanted to represent something that i thought was a very interesting, complex and beautiful place. [smith] yep. is there something specific about the native community in oakland that people should take away from thisook or that you want people to understand better as a result of what you've done here? is the community in oakland any different is the oakland community something specific? [orange] i think people om oakland know the oakland experience and can recognize it.

i don't know iou know, it's in the book. but i think there are probably more commonalities between native people living in cities in but other major citiesprobably than there are differences. you geow, native people iral haveore commonalities than differences, and that's true of urban native people. [smith] i think what's interesting is thetereotype, if someone said to you, i'm gonna read a book a native american novelist that's going to be about the native experience, ina native american novelist i think you would imthat it would be more on the land than in a big city. so there's something kinda counter to conveional wisdom or to the stereotype it about that. e] uh huh. [smith] talk a little bit about that. you say in the book, beg indian is not necessarily being of the land. i kept thinking, at every page here, i kept thinking, this as much y about detachment from the land or at least from the stereotype as it is about anything. [orange] yeah, so, you know, there's this sort of

tension between reservation natives and urban natives. [smith] yeah. deension between reservation natives and urban natives. [orange] and it's this that you don't have a land base. i mean, if you grow up in a community whvee you feel like you land base and you see other people of your tribe, and maybe there's evel of relationship to the language, you know, that's an easier place to bld an identity. and a lot of urban native spaces are intertribal. so you got somebody that's like three different tribes, and so you can't necessarily pick one and say that one is more important. but the land that's often being referred to is reservation land that people were moved to. not always. but the idea that somebody that grew up in the city has no basis for identity because they don't h connection to some mythical land that's been brought up for too long, [smith] that's a construct. [orange] yeah, it's a construct. yo, 70 percent of native people have been living in cities for over a decade.

[smith] right. buone difference we were visiting about this earlier, one difference is that, on t reservation, there's a presumed sovereignty or kind of an insularity or an intimacy to the community, and out in the city, that, both for good and for bad, is t there. [orange] mm-hmm. [smith] right? [onge] yeah. yeah, i mean, there isn't, there's not technically, you know, urban pepele in cities are not le. but it's an experience that i'mriting about, and often there's, like i said, thert s people from differibes, there's a lot of intermarriage between tribes ornaetween white people anve people. like you were saying earlier, i drove back to oklahoma growing up and saw my relatives there and understood that there's a people that i come from and that's where they are now. so all this identity stuff very messy, but it's a mess that we're moving deeper into. you know, by 2042, whites are the minorities.sy, and we're talkin about a big mix of different mixes of people.

and i think we have to find better ways and not singular ways of talking about what people are. mith] so for someone like felix, your son, he wants to understand native culture. technology is at his disposal. i mean, yoally have a scene in which orville redfeather, in this book, 14 years old, kind of googles indian culture, or looks on, i know if it's youtube, but basically goes online to learn about indian culture. i mean that really, i thought, was such an interesting little statement on, you know, how far we've moved away from the experience of understanding who you are and what you are, that ych now have to access logy to take you back. so that is one big fference now, is that the preservation or the persistence of indian lture, in some ways, relies on people being able to get access to aspects of it that they may not ence on a day to day basis, which invariably, like everything else in the world, involves technology. [orange] yeah, and i think culture is a living concept and it shouldn't, we shouldn't need to reach back.

i mean, sure, you bring stuff along, but native people have been adapting for 500 years in different ways, and culture changes, it's not a static thing. [smith] yeah. so how do you help your son understand who he is and who you are and what indian culture is, in your own life? [orange] i mean, the same way any otherace would, you know, you have conversations. there's not...this question comes up and it, you know, it's not different tn, like he knows whfamily is and he knows, we tell him stories and we have conversations about what it mean he's part chinese, too. sometimes the question is bothersome because it feels like it means he needs to be doing something that's traditional that's the very thing i'm sort of speaking against. [smith] exactly. [orange] you know what i mean? so it's complicated. there's not an easy answer. erd he's a mix of dit things.

so it's a hard question to answer because there's no simple aner like i'm taking him to powwow dance lessons. [smith] but your experience being biracial growing up, and in fact i've heard you say that sometimes y were, you know, called out mistakenly for beinese when you were growing up. i mean, the fact is that everybody is a x of everything, or a lot of people are a mix of everything these days, and so it's probably not that unusual tht you have to sort of srough all that and you just move on with your life. [orange] well, like i sa, it's a subject that we need to get better at talking about, because it's complicated and there's so many facets to it. and we're moving further into that, we're not away from that. [smith] we're moving toward it. [orange] yeah, we're moving toward it mith] you teach at the school in santa fe where you got your mfa. you're not there all the time, but you're, like, doing a week a month? [orange] uh hmmm. [smith] is tght? tell me about the students you encounter. what are you doing to bring along tthe next generation my oranges, or looking for the next or enabling the next tommy orange?

what do you see in these students to do based on your own experience? i mean a lot of it's just basic craft stuff, ust teaching good writing. one of the benefits of having gone through the book experience is that i sort of understand and have access to, sortke a gatekeeper, like you have access to the publishing world in ways and you can encourage students and you ach them what that whole process is like. ju but most of the work i getting your writing into really good shape andoing the hard work that tak. [smith] i always think that it's rd to teach somebody how to be a good writer. you can talk to them abt aspects of craft, but at the end of the day, the story has to come from them and the desire to do it has to come from them and the voic to come from them. [orange] i think so, but i think sometimes good writing g i think, like, a good musician,

that's an artform too, they learn to practice and practice and practice and practice until they can really play. so i tthat doesn't always transfer to teaching good writing. i think you need to put in the same, it's the same work ethic that you need to take to any art form to make good art. [smith] one thing that occurs to me given the year that you've had, the s of this book, the reviews that this book has received, yoaswere on the long listhey call it, for the national book award, the 10 that were the finalists for this ard, success is amazing when it comes, but it also has to be kept in perspective. i mean, you know some number of years ago you were back at the bookstore working full-time, reading, learning what you liked. now all of a sudden, and probably you couldn't have imagined, and other people couldn'imagine, to have hit it out of the park on your first time up. right? so how do you process that experience of being a success the first time out of the gate?

what does it tell you about what you need to do next or how you think about the work that you do? [orange]in think you don't, i you can't process it. it's t much. you know, it's like surreality on surreality. k i try to ground myself in basic things, like i runnow than i ever did before, and i try to keep writing and spending time with famil and try not to overthink it, really. [smith] yeah. [orange] it's a lot of information and a lot of weird information to process. [smith] do you have a bunch of ideas that you've got percolating now? [orange] yeah, i'm working on a couple new books. [smith] any other aspect of art interest you? film ything else that you think now, maybe, having had your eyes opened to this with the eeriee with this book that you'd like to do? but that's sort of my own private enjoyment and it's, you know, it's just something that i like to do in my own time. [smith] yeah. i think that's--

so if you, when th comes to write another book, will it also be a native story? i mean, do you think that the next book will be vastly different from this one? [orange] yeah, i hope it's different. certainly wouldn't wanna write the same thing. i ldn't know what it wook like to not write a native story. because again, like i was saying before, if i just wrote a story, then it would automatically be sorof a white male, if you don't include your background, so it will include my experience because that's my experience, and my characters will always speak through what i speak through because that's what feels real and true to me. speak through what i smith] right. [orange] so i don't think i'll ever write a book that somehow doesn't talk about it, because i don't even really know what that looks like. [smith] you're still reading other people's work, of course. you're continuing to read as you do this work, for pliosure and to get inspir right? [orange] uh huh. [smith] so what are the last couple of

good thiat you read? [orange] i think i'm gonna mess her name up, but rleria luiselli, i jud, she has a forthcomingbook d "archive of lost children" and it's absolutely fantastic. and my goond terese mailhot has a book that, weaduated, and it's absolutely fantastic. [smith] from the mfa program. im [orange] at the same and we sold our books within two weeks of each other, and her book made the new york times bestseller list here. and her book's called "heart berries." tere mailhot. that's an amazing that came. if you wanna be reading more native voices, i would go there. [smith] it's good that there are native voices, that we're beginning to see an adequate amount, if not enough. at least we're beginning to move more toward that being a slice of liteture, that's good. [orange] mm-hmm. [smith] right? i mean it's taken a while. i think one of the. reasons that people

were so moved by this book and were so impressed by this book is it felt so different from everything else that we see. and maybe the time will come whent' not gonna be as different as it feels now. [orange] well, if you lookt all the books that are coming out and getting a lot of attention, it's probably more diverse than it's evereen, as far as what the publishers are wanting to publish now. [smith] a reflection of the changing, as you talk about, the changing population of the country. [orange] yeathink it's, yo, i think it's inevitable that it's gonna keep going that same way. [smith] well i'm so happy for your success. it really is a delight to see somebody whose book is so good get the attention that he deserves and that it deserves, and i hope it opens the doors for you to do a whthe bunch of other greags going forward. it's like discovering a real talent, a jewel. [orange] thank you. [smith] thanks for making time to be with us. ou. [smith] tommy orange, [smith] thanks for making tim thank you so much. (audience clapping) [smith] we'd love to have you join us in the studio. .osit our website at kl/overheard ito find invitations erviews, q&as with our audience and guests,

and an arcf past episodes. [orange] there's a whole bunch of elements from my own life that if i told you all of them, if you said that's sad, it'd probably make me sad. like i lived through them and they were hard, other native people who've read my book, that's the one thing i haven't heard is that it's sad. so i thinkoueople who have gone t hard experiences don't necessarily get the same takeaway. [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith a texas government affairs consultancy, the alice kleberg reynolds foundation, claire and carl stuartand by entergy.

>> tonight a speal edition president trump and impeachment. is president believes he is above the law. >> a divided nation i >> is a hoax and disgrace and embarrassment to our country. >> embattled president. we go inside this moment with pu tzer prize winners maggie haberman with white house correspondent fornew york times" and historian jon meacham for conversations on the presidencynd history next. >> this is "washington week" funding provided by -- >> there's aoment a moment of realizati realization, of taunde