Annotate With Sara

SPOILERS

There There by Tommy Orange is a story about indigenous identity set in Oakland, California. The story has a large cast of characters who each have moments in the spotlight. The vignette-style chapters give every character’s point of view and a plot that unfolds in fragments. I was comfortably on the edge of my seat the whole book.

Annotating for Book Club

I read this book with Literature Noir Book Club, and whenever I read for bookclubs, I annotate with the club’s meeting in mind. When I see something cool, like an extensive motif, I tend to focus on that heavily so I can share it in the discussion.

There There by Tommy Orange was the November 2023 Literature Noir Bookclub pick. Literature Noir is a Los Angeles-based virtual club that focuses on BIPOC stories and uplifting marginalized voices.

Tunnel Motif Running Through the Vignettes

Once I started noticing tunnels in the writing, I saw them everywhere and knew I would bring this imagery to the bookclub discussion. Tunnels tie the stories together, from tunnels in Oakland’s city infrastructure to barrels of a gun. Tunnel imagery is also the vehicle for metaphors about death and alcoholism, which many of the characters are very intimate with. Below is a list of all of the tunnels I annotated in the book.

You will need 15 tabs total to annotate the tunnels in There There.

Tab 1. This tab is for the Tab Key.

I labeled my tab “Tunnel Imagery.”

Tab 2. The TV Test Pattern & Riflescope

“If you left the TV on, you’d hear a tone at 440 hertz—the tone used to tune instruments—and you’d see that Indian, surrounded by circles that looked like sights through riflescopes. There was what looked like a bull’s-eye in the middle of the screen, with numbers like coordinates. The Indian’s head was just above the bull’s-eye, like all you’d need to do was nod up in agreement to set the sights on the target. This was just a test.”

– There There by Tommy Orange, Prologue, Page 3

Margin Notes for This Quote: Besides the riflescope, another tube and gun implied in this paragraph is in the design of TVs from this era, which were made of cathode-ray tubes, a type of light gun.

Tab 3. The first thing Dene recorded with his uncle’s camera was in a tunnel. A camera’s eye view is a type tunnel too. 

“There was a tunnel that went below the park. About ten feet high, it stretched some two hundred yards, and in the middle, for about fifty of those yards, if you were in there, you couldn’t see a thing. His mom told him there was an underground waterway that went all the way out into the bay.”

“He didn’t know why he came, or why he brought the camera. He didn’t even know how to use it. Wind howled in the tunnel. At him. It seemed to breathe. It was a mouth and a throat. He tried but failed to turn the camera on, then pointed it at the tunnel anyway.”

– There There by Tommy Orange, Dene Oxendene, Page 43

Tab 4. A Blocked Gastrointestinal Tract

“A bezoar is a mass found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, but when you search bezoar you’re led to The Picatrix.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Edwin Black, page 65

Tab 5. A Blocked Birth Canal

“I went through twenty-six hours of labor for you, twenty-six hours and then a cesarean section to top it off. They had to slice me open, Ed, you didn’t wanna come out, you were two weeks late, did I ever tell you that? You wanna talk about feeling full.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Edwin Black, page 73

Tab 6. Charles told Calvin he took him to Octavio’s house to force him into action, reenacting the feeling of their childhood sewer tunnel experience.

“You remember the time we went over to Dimond Park, and we went through that long sewer tube? We ran through it, and at some point there was no light, just the sound of the rushing water and we didn’t know where the fuck it came from or where it was going. We had to jump over it. You remember we heard a voice, and then you thought someone grabbed your leg, and you squealed like a little fucking baby pig, and you almost fell in but I pulled you back and we jumped and ran out of there together?” Charles said, sliding a bottle of tequila on the table in front of him back and forth. “I’m trying to get you into the position of being grabbed,” Charles said, and stopped sliding the bottle. He gripped it, held it still. “When Octavio sees your face, it’s gonna be like that, and I’m’a pull you back, save you from being taken down that long tube to nowhere. You ain’t getting outta this shit alone, you feel me?”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Calvin Johnson, page 92

Tab 7. Two pages later, Charles is staring down the barrel of Octavios gun (another tunnel).

“What the fuck? I stared down the barrel of the gun. I went into it. Straight into the tunnel of it. I saw the way it had to go down.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Calvin Johnson, page 94

Tab 8. Trauma feels like a tunnel in Opal’s body.

“So she bore those years, their weight, and the years bored a hole through the middle of her, where she tried to keep believing there was some reason to keep her love intact. Opal is stone solid, but there is troubled water that lives in her, that sometimes threatens to flood, to drown her—rise up to her eyes.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, page 161

Tab 9. The Badger’s Tunnel (Medicine Box Story)

Dom Alexander—a freelance writer, digital marketer, and fellow Literature Noir Book Club member—opened my eyes to this particular tunnel during our bookclub discussion of There There. I am so grateful that he pointed out the badger’s burrow in Octavio Gomez’s chapter. It fits right in with the imagery, and the badger’s tale is also part of a pattern of Indigenous folklore in the book.

“All the animals met about it, and a badger came out of a hole in the ground and called out the name, but as soon as he did, he ran. The other animals came after him. That badger went underground and stayed there. He was afraid they would punish him for naming it.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Octavio Gomez, page 184

Tab 10. Daniel 3D prints guns and has second thoughts looking down the barrel (a tunnel) of one. 

“Octavio pulled the gun out of my hands. He looked down the barrel, pointed it at us.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Daniel Gonzales, page 189

Tab 11. Addiction is a Deep Tunnel

“That need that won’t quit. That years-deep pit you were bound to dig, crawl into, struggle to get out of. Your parents maybe burned a too-deep, too-wide God hole through you. The hole was unfillable.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Thomas Frank, page 217

Tab 12. The BART Tunnel System

“The train emerges, rises out of the underground tube in the Fruitvale district,”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Thomas Frank, page 222

Tab 13. Thomas’s Tunnel Vision

“Thomas had been looking off, or not off but down and like he could see through the ground and like he could see something specific there.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Thomas Frank, page 261

Tab 14. A bullet tunnels through Thomas’s neck, which contains most vital tunnels in the human body: major arteries, the esophagus, and the spinal cord.

“He’s never in his life felt as heavy as he feels now, and it burns, the back of his neck, like no burn he’s ever felt. Thomas’s childhood fear of eternity in hell comes back to him and it’s right there in the burn and the cool of the hole in his neck.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Thomas Frank, page 274

Tab 15. Tony’s near-death experience is like tunneling to the center of the earth.

“Tony rolls onto his back and right away he’s sinking. Quicksand slow. The sky darkens, or his vision darkens, or he’s just sinking deeper and deeper in, headed for the center of the earth, where he might join the magma or water or metal or whatever is there to stop him, hold him, keep him down there forever.”

— There There by Tommy Orange, Tony Loneman page 304

Final Thoughts: Reading There There is Like Walking a Dark Tunnel

What if There There’s narrative structure is meant to mimic a dark tunnel? I imagined that I entered this tunnel in the Prologue and that I exited on the last page. By design, the entrance and exit are both Tony Loneman’s POV.

In the Prologue, Tony leads us into the story’s tunnel. He hints about the book’s ominous ending, then leaves us with our curiosity. I don’t know about you, but I never stopped wondering about the ending, like I had tunnel vision for it.

I read like I was in a dark tunnel, too. I treaded so carefully, straining my eyes for clues about the ending. By the time I saw light at end, I was sprinting. Those propulsive two-page chapters brought me right through the exit: the final chapter, Tony’s point of view.

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