If you liked
Books like There There
by Tommy Orange
There There is Tommy Orange's PEN/Hemingway Award winner — twelve Native American characters whose lives converge on the Big Oakland Powwow at the Oakland Coliseum. The non-fiction-essay prologue establishes the argument the novel does in fictional form. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Only Good Indiansby Stephen Graham Jones
“The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones 2020 review. Four Blackfeet men who committed a hunting transgression are tracked across the present-day American West by something that wants the moral debt paid. Bram Stoker Award 2020.”
Homegoingby Yaa Gyasi
“Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 2016 review. Seven generations of two half-sister bloodlines, one in Ghana and one in America, from eighteenth-century Fanteland to present-day Stanford. Gyasi's debut and one of the canonical contemporary American diaspora novels.”
Jamesby Percival Everett
“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
The Vanishing Halfby Brit Bennett
“The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 2020 review. Identical twin sisters from a small light-skinned Black Louisiana town diverge in the 1960s: one returns with her daughter, the other passes for white in California. Bennett's second novel and one of the canonical 2020s American literary novels.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
The Bee Stingby Paul Murray
“The Bee Sting by Paul Murray 2023 review. A four-POV Irish family novel about the slow collapse of one car-dealer family in the post-2008 recession. Booker Prize shortlist 2023.”
FAQ
Common questions about There There read-alikes
- What is the closest match for There There?
- The Only Good Indians. Both contemporary Indigenous American literary novels working against the European folkloric conventions that have dominated the broader literary representation of Native American characters for two centuries. Stephen Graham Jones writes in a literary-horror register; Tommy Orange writes in a literary-ensemble register. Both are essential.
- I want more Tommy Orange.
- Wandering Stars (2024, the historical-and-contemporary follow-up to There There) is the obvious next read. Wandering Stars runs the ancestral chain of the Red Feather family back through Sand Creek and forward into the present, structurally continuing the There There project.
- I want more contemporary Indigenous American fiction.
- The catalog is light on this subgenre. Louise Erdrich (The Sentence, The Night Watchman), Brandon Hobson (The Removed), and Joy Harjo (Crazy Brave) are the canonical contemporary picks not yet reviewed here.
- I want another ensemble-cast literary novel.
- The Bee Sting (Paul Murray's four-voice Irish family novel) and Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi's chapter-per-character construction across fourteen generations) are the closest structural matches in our catalog.
The original