Feeling Found: Reading Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars

There are some books that fall into your lap that profoundly alter the way you either relate to the world or to yourself. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange is definitely one of those books that do both.

The story follows several generations of an Indigenous family whose lives are shaped by the legacy of colonial violence, displacement, addiction, and cultural fragmentation. The novel begins with the aftermath of the Sand Creek Massacre and traces how historical trauma travels through descendants living in modern-day Oakland, California. But I need to also say that at the same time, this book isn’t exclusively about any of these things.

I often find in literature or films that try to capture the essence of suffering found in marginalized communities, they simplify the pain and identity of the characters so that they are easily identified with their oppression. But life rarely falls into these neat boxes that are cleanly divided into those who are hurt and those who are doing the hurting. The direction of morality and identity are never simple cases.

Tommy Orange does a phenomenal job of capturing this complexity. While the book covers the lives of “indigenous” people, it simultaneously breaks that label apart, making the reader sit with the question, “What does it actually mean to be indigenous?” Orange builds these extremely complex and fleshed out characters who are flawed in their own unique ways, as they struggle to understand the identity forced upon them. Throughout the entire novel, nativity is never romanticized as an obscure ideal, but is fleshed out and grounded in real complex circumstances.

This rejection of typical labels allows for the characters to feel so much more real. They exist in both their light and their shadow, allowing the reader to see both the best and worst parts of themselves through the characters. Just to shout out another book that does this phenomenally, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.

Orange’s expansion of the indigenous identity in this novel, merges a phenomenal plot, rich philosophical themes, and true historical events. The plot covers the foundations and practices of the Carlisle Industrial school, the first federally funded off-reservation boarding school for Native American children in the United States. It was built on the principle of “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The novel also covers the Sand Creek Massacre, the addiction epidemic in native communities, the mental ramifications of gun violence, and the 1969 occupation of the Alcatraz island.

It’s interesting to me, that even though I had read about these events in my history classes, they never stuck in my mind. History was always presented to me through a third-person lens which made it feel like I was reading a science textbook. As if there was a right answer to history. But since then, I have found that fiction is one of the best ways to approximate the true complexity of human history. For example, reading a psychology textbook about addiction, cannot lead to the same embodied understanding of the experience, because it will only be explained through it’s technical components. But life fundamentally isn’t experienced just through its technicalities.

The genocide of indigenous people in this country didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened to real people who existed. To strip the retelling of these experiences, giving the power to some third-person lens, removes the actual weight of these events, deeply disempowering those who were impacted by it. And most importantly, are continued to be impacted by it. Trauma always carries forward, blurring the lines between history and the present.

Orange highlights this blur amazingly. It is, for me, this part of the novel that caused the most change within myself. For the last decade or so, I don’t mean to state the obvious, I’ve felt extremely lost. Prior to this book, I always thought these feelings were caused by some deep inadequacy in myself. If I just explored and understood myself “better” I would somehow finally feel found. I moved away from home, separated myself from my extended family, and searched for this “foundness” in every nook and cranny of the world. But what this novel revealed, is that this attempt is like a tree trying to understand itself by only looking at the parts that are above the ground, completely ignoring its roots and everything that hides beneath the surface.

In 1999, a year after I was born, my family immigrated to this country from India, leaving “behind” the rest of our family for the first time in our ancestral history. I became so comfortable speaking words my grandparents never understood, and struggled to speak the ones that they did. I dressed differently, thought differently, held different values and practiced different customs. I worked so hard to become “American”, thus fundamentally destroyed the Indian within me. How can I possibly feel found, when I have effectively tried to ignore and burn the very roots that tie me to the ground?

I can never understand myself in isolation. The history of my family inevitable impacts me whether I am around them or not. Therefore, I must sit with my roots, to actually reach a deeper level of understanding. I’m returning home later this year, and I want to keep this lesson close to me.

I really loved this book and think it’s an excellent example of how history when tied to compelling narratives can really bring the world to life. Indigeneity is not something of the past and is still very much alive around us. I would recommend this book to anyone who is feeling lost, is dealing, either personally or with a loved one, with addiction, and to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of indigeneity.