Storylines
At the moment, what surprised me most about There There is that the storylines from chapter to chapter have very little to do with one another. All of the main characters are young Native Americans, and they all have a close family member who deals/has dealt with alcoholism, but this is where the similarities stop. With Home Fire, different sections had different points of view, but they were all connected from the start. Reading There There's blurb, I know that eventually all of the storylines will converge, but as of now there are similarities but very little overlap. So far, the only overlap I've noticed is that a Native American man named Harvey has appeared in two chapters, which can't be a coincidence.
Questions
One of the main things I've been wondering about in reading There There is correct terminology. All of the main characters at some point refer to themselves as "Indians," but I was always taught (by white teachers) that "Indian" is offensive and "Native American" or "Indigenous" is preferable. Maybe this is something that has changed recently (I remember being taught in elementary school that "black" is rude and to always refer to black people as "African American" instead), or maybe it's a term that's being reclaimed. It may also differ from person to person, so it's possible that there is no right or wrong answer in terms of whether "Indian" is a useable term.
I too noticed that there are very loose connections between each story of each chapter. The blurb on the back of the book says that they are all connected to the "big Oakland Powwow", but some chapters (such as Opal's) don't mention the powwow.
ReplyDeleteI was also wondering about the correctness of "Indian" vs. "Native American" bc like you I was always taught that this was very incorrect, but like you said, I was only taught this by other white people.
ReplyDeleteI think as the story goes on we'll definitely be seeing more overlap. I was always curious about the topic of "Indian" vs "Native American" too though, but I figure it's just a way of reclaiming that phrase, since it's not a geographically accurate phrase to describe Native Americans however I can definitely see them as maybe using is as a way to put power into the phrase, by reclaiming it from the people that labelled them as that?
ReplyDeleteOK, we will definitely discuss this question about terminology in class!
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