[smith] tommy orange, welcome. [tommy orange] thank you for having me. [smith] thank you very much for being here. Sove the book. I wanna talk all about the book and talk all about you, but i wanna talk about the title of the book first. So i didnt actually get the reference until after that this is Gertrude Stein. [orange] mmhmm. [smith] right . Like you, an oaklander. Is that the right way to say it . Oaklandite . [orange] oaklander. [smith] oaklander. [orange] yeah. [smith] so Gertrude Steinndfamk theres no there there. And this iyour response, this is your rebuttal Gertrude Stein. [orange] and its also, i wodnt 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. [sth] very specific. [orange] and it was developed over. So in her everybodys autobiography, somebody asks her, why dont you write about oakland . There is no there. Shes just talking about her experience. And so people have used it to say oakland has no character. And that is more a reflection on at people think of oakland or are trying to make oakland into than what her thoughts were. [smith] it may be as much a rebuttal of those people than of r. [orange] yeah. [smith] right. And oakland, as well come to in a second, is a character in this book. This book struck me, its a portrait ofo america that we dont see. And its a portrait of americans we dont 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, where natiple are living in cities. [smith] because lets y that, in fact, this follows a dozen characters, in this book, and it really is about the lives of native americans in an urban environment, sort of detached from what you would think of as theraditional 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 but when they came, even though it was sort of, le so the idea was thatnt was encpeould assimilateo move and essentially disappear in cities, and the culture and language would be sort of the last step of erasure, but Indian Centers started up all over in every major city and all these offerent tribes from ar the country would come together and form community. Those people had families, and so theres generations of people that have this background o 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 . Indian culture is still a thing. [orange] yeah. [smitih] right . And in fact theres a very key, i think it was a key scene in this book, wh oe theres a powwow at tland coliseum. I mean, what i love about it is is that Indian Culture persists regardless of circumstance, regardless of setting, regardless of, you know, is it old times, contemporary times, there is sti about this culture that you write about. And in your own life it continues to be a significant defining aspect. [orange] yeah, i meareit means a lot of dif things. Something that weve suffered from is the idea that theres one way to be indian, and often that means its historical or its tied to some specific tradition. And it just means, theres over 575 tribes, all with distinct languages and histories and ways of being indian. So this was one, this was just one aspect of native culture and American Life that ive neveiaseen in books or in m so i vero much wanted to write iat lack. [smith] you are the child of a native fath and a white mother. You selfdescribe or selfidentify though, as native american. Thats your own, and i mean that yfrom the perspective r art. You are a native american novelist. Youre not a novelist who happens to be tive american. You view that identity as central to your art and to yourplac. [orange] well, you know, i was a native person before i was an artist. I grew up with my dad, very much knowing that im native. [smith] and youd go back to his, go back to oklahoma with him, right . [orange] yeah. And it was just part of what i was. Knew i was sort of, youow, i w. Im biracial. But there was really nothing to speak of. [smith] well, the fact i b you point out in tk, youre as indian as obama is africanamerican. [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 tee ie in northern new mexithe 70s. She was sort of a wandering hippie from oakland and heracticing ceremony in northern new mexico. So my identity has never been anything other than i know im nive, and my dad always made sure that we knew that and were proudf it. So im automatically a native author because that, you know, you can only be an author without any qualifying thing before it if youre white. Youre just an author. Otherwise you put the thing before. [smith] its a little ridiculous that it has to be qualied. An author is an author is an author. Al clearly, your own experience and your own identity is on every page in every paragraph of this book. Youve chosen to tell your story, this story, as opposed to some other story. [orange] yeah. [smith] i mean its the oldest thing in the woted, your story, right . [orange] and i think, you know, i think again, to just tell any story, and if the just Start Talking about a protagonist and theya ave that guy go ronk 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 the audi because weve only been reading white male authors for so long, will automaticssume hes white and male. [smith] right. [orange] but if youre writing from your experiencend, you know, i would never write a default person that didclude my personal details. So its, you sort of have to write agsomething thats been the default. You have to actively resist, otherwise youre 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 ti, there are plenty of people who they read growing up in whom they see themselves, now or oneay. But if youre a native author, there have not been a lot of native authors for you to look to as mentors, role models, but if youre a native author, or to get a sense of hdo this. So who did you read growing up . [orange] i didnt read growing up. I wasnt a good student. I was into playing sports. I sort of actively resisted sool. And became a musician when i was 18 and then i went to school for sound engineering, this was right before the digital age took over. [smith] good career choice. [orange] yeah. [smith] right. [orange] pretty much right after i graduated, my skills were obsolete, and i got a job at a used bookstore and thats when i fell in love with reading, iny and then withsolete, and i got wrafter that. Ed bookstore and what i was reading then was not based on a teachers curriculum or anybody telling me what to read. I ended up reading a lot in translation ufd just a lot of obscure and just followed my own instincts. And so [smith] your voice as an artist came from the experience that you had [orange] yeah, exactly. I didnt end up reading a lot of native writers until i got into my mfa program at the institute of American Indian art. [smith] is there something about native writers that is particular, your mind . Would you or would we, as nonnative readers, say, be able to see, in native writing so ithing that would caout . [orange] no more than black writing would include black experience or chinese writing would include chinese experience. Its only categorized a certain way because its different than what the dominant [smith] characters, story, setting. [orange] yeah. Its great writing. The settings might be different and the characters lives might be different. What literature can do and what novels n do that i love is that, no matter who the reader is, you can live through an experience toand come to understand a and understand a people better, 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, like iabout a dozen we follow, im partial to orville redfeather, you can find aspects of yourself in them regardless of who these characters are. And i think thats one of the great things about, these are memorable charters all in this book. Its 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 not told in a traditional a to z linear narrative. It kiner jumps around and s different ways in which the story is presented. It mak i it actually a lot moeresting. It feels like a very modern book in that sense. Is this wh you intended . [orange] it is. You know, there were some craft choices that i knerybefore i knew what s was gonna tell. I knew i wanted a prologue, causee the way that functions in a novel. You can kind of experiment with a prologue and do thinghowever you want before you start the chapters and the story. I knew thanted a whole bunch of povs of a whole bunch of different characters and have, figuring t while you read how their lives intersect and how that also, you know, how it relates to the arc of the whole stor these are just craft decisions. [smith] but i love this crafty, processy stuff. I love this. Becauseally, these are very important decisions that ultimately are crucial to the success of the book. [orange] yeah, so, the idea, the idea came to me in a single mome what the actual book would be. I had just found out i was gonna be a father and i was driving with my wife do to l. A. [smith] well, i knowou have a son named felix whos seven now . [orange] correct. [smith] so were timing this perfectly. So its like, eight years ago . [orange] yeah, hes thout the same age abook. cause i thought of the idea before and i didnt write into it for a year cause i was busy becoming a father for the first time. [smith] preparing. Yeah, yeah yeah. [orange] but the idea just dropped into my head to have all these lives converge at a powwow at the oakland colium. Just, that was the basic premise, and i, you know, i spent the next six years just, that was after that writing into it. Or, you know, i didnt write for that first year, but after that, after waiting r a year, actually, you know, i really started waking up at five in the morning and id write after he went to sleep and i was working full time, so, i really went hard at it at first. I cant really explain exactly how i made it all work, but over six years, you know, you just keep going at the same thing and you figure it out. [smith] yeah. And. So weve talked about oakland a couple times, mentioned that oakland is the setting of this book, but really, oakland is all over this, oakland is a character in this bo. Why is oakland such an interesting place for you . About other works of art that feature oakland. And i th Fruitvale Station. Right . The film from a couple years ago. And then i kinda drew a blank after th. Am i not remembering something . [orange] well, theres two that you should watch wherthit represents oakland, re terrific films. Its blindspotting and sorry to bother you. They just came out this year. [smith] oh, sorry to bother you oh, thats right sorry to bother you. I did see sorry to bother you, i did not see blindspotting. You know, i didnt think about sorry to bother you as an oakland film i d where you, you know,ting. You cant help but understand that Fruitvale Station is an oakland film. So oakland as a character, talk about that. [orange] for me, its home, and you know, i love it because its where i grew up and its wt i know. You know, i cant, almost cant walk anywhere in oakland or drive around anywhere without it connecting to some memory, and thats kind of what home is is, yoe know, where you spend st time and where your memories are. But i was writing into the lack, again, you know, i didnt see any stories about natives in cities and i didnt 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 out the native community in oakland that people should take away from this book as a result of what youve done here . Is the community in oakland any diffent than it might be in another big city . Is the oaklandommunity something specific . [oraake] i think people fromnd know the oakland experience and can recognize it. Dont know if i, youple know, its in the book. But i think there are probably more commoes between native People Living in cities in other major cities than there are differences. You know, native people in general have more commonalities than differences, and thats true of urban native people. If someone said to you, im gonna read a book by a native american novelist thats going to be about the native experience, i thu would imagine that it would be more on the land than in a big city. So theres something kinda counter to conventional wisdom or to the stereoof it abou. [orange] uh huh. You say in the book, being indian is not necessarily being of the land. I kept thinking, at every page here, i kenking, this is as much a story about detachment from the land or at least from the stereotype as it is about anything. [orange] yeah, so, you know, theres this sort of tension between reservation natives and urban natives. [smith] yeah. [orange] and its this idea that you dont have a land base. I mean, if you grow up in a community where you ike you have a land base and you see other people of your tribe, ybe theres some level of relationship to the language, you know, thats an eaener place to build an ty. And a lot of urban native spaces are intertribal. So you got somebfey thats like three dnt tribes, and so you cant necessarily pick one and say that one is more important. But the land thats 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 dont have a connection to some mythical land thats been brought up for too long, [smith] thats a construct. [orange] yeah, its a construct. You know, 70 percent of native people have been living in cities for over a decade. [smith] right. But one difference we were visiting about this earlier, one differenti is that, on the reser, theres a presumed sovereignty or kind of an insularity or an intimacy to the community, anin the city, that, both for good and for bad, is not there. [orange] mmhmm. [smith] right . [orange] yeah. Yeah, i mean, there isnt, theres not technically, you know, urban people in cities are not a people. But its an exborience that im writing, and often theres, like i said, theres peopm different tribes, theres a lot of intermarriage between tribes or between people and native people. Like you were saying earlier, i drove back to oklahoma growing up and saw my relatives there d understood that therea peoplm and thats where they are now. So all this ssentity stuff is very but its a mess that were moving deeper into. You know, by 2042, whites are the minorities. Ouand were talking a big mix of different mixes of people. And i think we havto find s to talk about it, and not monolithic ways and not singularatays of talking about eople are. [smith] so for someone like felix, your son, he wants to understand native culture. Technology is at his disposal. I mean, you actually have a scene in which orville redfeather, in this book, 14 years old, kind of googles Indian Culture, or oks on, i dont know if its 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 weve moved ay from the experience of understanding who you are and what you are, that you now have to Access Technology to take you back. So tha nis one big differen, is that the preservation or the persistence of Indian Culture,me ways, relies on people being able to get acss to aspects of it that themay not experience 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 shouldnt, we shouldnt need to reach back. I mean, sure, you bring stuff along, but native people have been adapting for 500 years in different ws, and culture changes, its not a static thing. [smith] yeah. So how do you help your son understand who he is anwho you are and what Indian Culture is, in your own life . [orange] i mean, the same way any other race would, you know, you have conversations. Theres not. This question comes up and it, you know, it not different than, he knows who his family is and he knows, we tell him stories and we have conversations out what it means. Hes part chinese, too. Sometimes the question is bothersome because it feels like it means he needs to be doing something thats traditional thats the very thing im sort of speaking against. [smith] exactly. [orange] you know what i mean . So its complicated. Theres not an easy answer. And hes of different things. So its a hard question to answer because thes no simple answer like im taking him to powwow dance lessons. [smith] but yoci experience being bi growing up, and in fact ive heard you say that sometimes you were, you knowed out mistakenly for being chinese when you were growing up. I mean, the fact is that evryybody is a mix of eing, or a lot of people are a mix of everything these days, and so its probably not that unusual that you h sort of sort through all that and you just move on with your life. [orange] w sl, like i said, itsject that we need to get better at talking about, e its complicated and theres so many facets to it. And werhamoving further into were not moving away from that. And werhamoving [smith] were moving toward it. [orange] yeah, were moving toward it. [smith] you teach at the school in santa fe where you got your mfa. Youre not there all the time, but youre, like, doing a week a month . [orange] uh hm [smith] is that right . But youre, like, doing a week a month . Tell me about the students you encounter. What are you doing to bring along the neeration of tommy oranges, or looking for the next or enabling the next tommy orange . What do you see in these students and what do you tell them or encourage them to do based on your own experience . [orange] i think one of the benefits of the mfa program, i mean a lottuf its just basic craft, its just teaching good writing. One of the benefits of having gone tough the book experience is that i sort of understand and have access to, sort of like a gatekeeper, like you have access to the publishing world in ways and you can encourage students and you can teach them what that whole process is like. But most of the work is just getting your writing into really good shape and doing rd worthat it takes to make a good book. [smith] i always think that its hard to teach somebody how to be a good writer. You cas talk to them about aspe craft, but at the end of the day, the story has to come from them and the desire to do it has to come frm and the voice has to come from them. Bu [orange] i think so, i think sometimes good writing gets overly mystified. Bu [orange] i think so, think, like, a good musician, thats an artform too, they learn to practice and practice anpractice and practice until they can really play. So i think, that doesnt always transfer to teachi good writing. I think you need to put in the same, its the same work ethic at you need to take to any art form to make good art. Given the year that youve had, the success of this book, the reviews that this bo has received, you were on the long list, as they call it, for the National Book award, the 10 that were the filists for this award, success is amazing when it comes, but it also has to be kept in perspective. An, you know, just some number of years ago you were back at the bookstore working fulltime, reading, learning what you liked. Noall of a sudden, and probably you couldnt have imagined, and other people couldnt imagine as a debut novelist, ave hit it out of the parkn your first time up. Right . So how do you process that experience of being a success the first time out of e gate . What does it tell you about what you need to do next or how yout hink about the work tu do . [orange] i think you dont, i think you cant process it. Its too much. You know, its like surreality on sueality. I think i try to ground myself in basic things, youlike i run more now surthan i ever did before, and i try to keep writing and spendi time with family, and try not to overthink it, really. [smith] yeah. [orange] its a lot of information and a lot of weiformation t. [smith] do you have a bunch of ideas that youve got percolating now . [orange] yeah, im worki on a c. [smith] novels . [orange] yeah. [smith] any other aspect of art intert you . Film . Anything else that you think now, maybe, having had your eyes opened to this thwith the experience his book that youd like to do . [orange] well, i to play piano, but thats sort of my own private enjoyment and its, you know, its just something that i like to do in my own time. [smith] yeah. I think thats so if you, when the time 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 itdierent. I certainly wouldnt wanna write the same thing. I dont knt it would look like to not write a native story. Cause again, like i was saying before, ift wrote a story, then it would automatically be sort of a white male, if you dont include your background, thenet erased before you even start. Sot will inclu my experience because thats my experience, and my characters will always speak through what i speak thugh because thats what feels real and true to me. [smith] right. [orange] so i dont think ill ever write a book that somehow doesnt talk about it, cause i dont even really know what that looks like. [smith] youre still reading other peoples work, of course. Youre continuing to read as you do this work, for pleasure a get inspiration, right . [orange] uh huh. Of good things that you read . [orange] uh huh. [orange] i think im gonna mess her name up, but valeria luiselli, i just read, she has a forthcoming book called archive of lost children and its absolutely fantastic. And my good friend ar terese mailhothildren haok that, we graduated together, [smith] from the mfa program. [o at the same time, and we sold our books within two weeks of each other, and hetibook made the new york s bestseller list here. And her books called heart berries. Terese mailhot. Thats an amazing book that came out this year. If you wanna be reading more nativvoices, i would go there. [smith] its good that there are native voices, that were beginning to see an adequate amount, if not enough. At least were beginning to move more toward that beingat slice of literature, good. [orange] mmhmm. [smith] right . I mean its 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 fromsew and maybe the time will come when its not gonna be as different as it feels now. [orange] well, if you look at all the books that are coming out and getting a lot of attention, its probably more diverse than its ever been, 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] yeah. I [smith] a reflection of the cha think its, you know,ut, i think its inevitable that its gonna keep going that same way. [smith] well im 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 whole bunch of other great things going forward. Its like discovering a real talent, a jewel. [orange] thank you. [smith] thanks for making time to be with us. [orange] thank you. [smith] tommy orange, thank you so much. audience clapping [smith] wed love to have you join us in the studio. Visit our website at klru. Org overheard to find invitations to interviews, q as with our audience and guests, to find invitations and an archive of past episodes. [orange] theres a whole bunch of elements from my own life that if i told you a of them, if you said thats sad, itd probably make me sad. Like i lived through them and they were hard, abut i lived through th im okay, so other native people whove read my book, thats the one thing i havent heard is that its s. So i think people who have gone through hard experiences dont necessarily get the same takeaway. [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part byillco partners, a texas Government Affairs consultancy, the Alice Kleberg reynolds foundation, clairentnd carl stuart, and bygy. Tonight a special edition President Trump and impeachment. This president believes he is above the law. A divided nation. It is a hoax and disgrace and embarrassment to our country. Embattled esident. We go inside this moment with Pulitzer Prize winners Maggie Haberman with White House Correspondent for New York Times and historian jon meacham forio convers on the this is Washington Week fundin provided by theres aoment a moment of realizati realization, of