81 pages • 2 hours read
Tommy OrangeThere There
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4 Summary: “Powwow”
Part 4, Chapter 18 Summary: Orvil Red Feather
The final section of There There includes short narratives from each of the 12 characters as they each enter the Coliseum for the Big Oakland Powwow. Orvil and his brothers are excited to be there and spend some of the change they collected on fry bread (a deep-fried flatbread). They discuss whether Orvil will win the cash prize for dancing, and then Orvil goes into the locker room and puts on his regalia. One of the older men talks about dancing being a “prayer” (231). Orvil is nervous and “tries to shake off the feeling of feeling like a fraud” as he goes out with the other dancers for the Grand Entry (232). Afterward, he tries to locate his brothers.
Part 4, Chapter 19 Summary: Tony Loneman
On his way to the powwow, wearing his regalia, Tony encounters an older white woman on the train who asks him, “So you’re […] a Native American?” He invites her to the Coliseum for the powwow. He thinks about how people just want “a little story they can bring back home with them […] about how they saw a real Native American boy on a train” (235).
