Wandering Stars: A Novel
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.
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Community Reviews
Well written, glad to have read this book to learn more about how Indigenous people have been treated in America, and especially how it has affected them then and now.
This prequel (and sequel) to There, There is heartbreaking, moving, and inspiring. It was one of my more anticipated releases of the year and it did not disappoint.
The deliberate stripping of Native American identity and culture is not that kind of situation discussed in Martin Puchner’s illuminating book about the heterogeneity of culture—the notion that given cultures are not freshly sprouted and unadulterated stock. Rather, culture as we use the term is a mixed bag of borrowing or imposing culture systems through invasion and colonization or simply the normal blending that results from mass migrations and resettlements.
In this story, the cultural stripping is not being done by a foreign power. It is not a thing of centuries past in some distant and mysterious world. Rather, it is an instance of one group of Americans—who it might be noted hold the entire stock of hard and soft power—deciding its culture is superior to that of another American group. The story that unfolds in this book is about generational trauma and the challenge of thriving as forced adoptees of a transplant culture. It is about today’s world and should serve as a reminder that it is naïve and dangerous to force one’s view of the world on another’s agency.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for providing this eARC.
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