Tommy Orange
07/2019
native-american minority bay-area white-culture imperialism
Everyone's gonna think it's about the money. But who doesn't fucking want money? It's about why you want money, how you get it, then what you do with it that matters. Money didn't never do shit to no one. That's people (20)
Maxine makes me read her Indian stuff that I don't always get. I like it, though, because when I do get it, I get it way down at the place where it hurts but feels better because you feel it, something you couldn't feel before reading it, that makes you feel less alone, and like it's not gonna hurt as much anymore (20)
She was talking about how the place where she'd grown up in Oakland had changed so much, that so much development had happened there, that the there of her childhood, the there there, was gone, there was no there there anymore (38)
Rob probably didn't look any further into the quote because he'd gotten what he wanted from it. He probably used the quote at dinner parties and made other people like him feel good about taking over neighborhoods they wouldn't have had the guts to drive through ten years ago (39)
What I want to do is to pay the storytellers for their stories. Stories are invaluable, but to pay is to appreciate. And this is not just qualitative data collection. I want to bring something new to the vision of the Native experience as it's seen on the screen. We haven't seen the Urban Indian story. What we've seen is full of the kinds of stereotypes that are the reason no one is interested in the Native story in general, it's too sad, so sad it can't even be entertaining, but more importantly because of the way it's been portrayed, it looks pathetic, and we perpetuate that, but no, fuck that, excuse my language, but it makes me mad because the whole picture is not pathetic, and the individual people and stories that you come across are not pathetic or weak or in need of pity, and there is real passion there, and rage, and that's part of what I'm bringing to the project, because I feel that way too (40)
When we see that the story is the only way that we live our lives, only then can we start to change (112)
Listen, baby, it makes me happy you want to know, but learning about your heritage is a privilege. A privilege we don't have. And anyway, anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian. More or less real Indian. Don't ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it is precious. You're Indian because you're Indian because you're Indian (119)
"Lony," Loother says in that way an older brother can take you down just by saying your name (130)
The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed. An unattended wound gets infected. Becomes a new kind of wound like the history of what actually happened became a new kind of history. All these stories that we haven't been telling all this time, that we haven't been listening to, are just part of what we need to heal. Not that we're broken. And don't make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived, is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient? (137)
If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that's how you know you're on board the ship that serves hors d'oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who've never even heard of the words hors d'oeuvres or fluff (138)
If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don't know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger (139)
We won't have come expecting gunfire. A shooter... We're once and twice removed from most of what we see on the other side of the screen, especially that awful man, always a man (140)
'That's what I'm trying to get out of this whole thing. All put together, all our stories. Because all we got right now are reservation stories, and shitty versions from outdated history textbooks. A lot of us live in cities now. This is just supposed to be like a way to start telling this other story.' 'I just don't think it's right for me to claim being Native if I don't know anything about it' 'So you think being Native is about knowing something?' 'No, but it's about a culture, and a history'(149)
She shuffles her music and it lands on Smokey Robinson's 'The Track of My Tears.' This song gives her that strange mix of sad and happy. Plus it's upbeat. That's what she loves about Motown, the way it asks you to carry sadness and heartbreak but dance while doing so (162)
Death alone eludes hard work and hardheadedness. That and memory. But there's no time and no good reason most of the time to look back. Leave them alone and memories blur into summary (165)
'So? We all fuck up. It's how we come back from it that matters' 'I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do then. I can't get him back, I can't get them back. I don't know what the fuck any of this is about' 'You're not supposed to... That's the way this whole thing is set up,' she said, 'You're not ever supposed to know. Not all the way. That's what makes the whole thing work the way it does. We can't know. That's what makes us keep going' (186)
I knew I wasn't white. But not all the way. Because while my hair is dark and my skin is brown, when I look in the mirror I see myself from the inside out. And inside I feel as white as the long white pill-shaped throw pillow my mom always made me keep on my bed even though I never used it. I grew up in Moraga, which is a suburb just on the other side of Oakland hills--which makes me even more Oakland hills than the Oakland hills kids. So I grew up with money, a pool in the backyard, an overbearing mother, an absent father. I brought home outdated racist insults from school like it was the 1950s. All Mexican slurs, of course, since people where I grew up don't know Natives still exist. Thats how much those Oakland hills separate us from Oakland. Those hills bend time (198)
You don't have to defend all white people you think aren't a part of the problem just because I said something negative about white culture (246)
This book was a really important read for me. It is a perspective on American Culture which is necessary for us to hear.
There is much emphasis on listening and to stories. The importance of how this will help with the healing process. Because there is much to be mended, particularly within this space.
There was a lot of good perspective on how to apologize, how to recognize, and how reconciliation might look. It is authentic and honest, and it opens my ears to a narrative I could have imagined existed but had not been pointed out explicitly to me before.
It speaks to the broader nature of American Imperialist Culture and our White Culture more generally. Why is it so hard for white people to recognize with putting up personal defences about the integrity of one's own morale? Recognize this pain and these patterns.