The (Un)happiness of Urban Indigeneity in Tommy Orange’s There There

HORÁKOVÁ, Martina. The (Un)happiness of Urban Indigeneity in Tommy Orange’s There There. In Isabel González-Díaz and Fabián Orán-Llarena. Unhappy Beginnings: Narratives of Precarity, Failure, and Resistance in North American Texts. New York: Routledge, 2024, p. 74-87. Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture. ISBN 978-1-032-52659-1. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003407744-7.

Basic information

• Original name: The (Un)happiness of Urban Indigeneity in Tommy Orange’s There There
• Authors: HORÁKOVÁ, Martina (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: New York, Unhappy Beginnings: Narratives of Precarity, Failure, and Resistance in North American Texts, p. 74-87, 14 pp. Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture, 2024.
• Publisher: Routledge

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Chapter(s) of a specialized book
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: printed version "print"
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• ISBN: 978-1-032-52659-1
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003407744-7
• Keywords in English: unhappy beginnings; Tommy Orange; There There; urban Indigeneity; Sarah Ahmed; settler-colonial killjoy
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

This chapter explores the relation between Indigeneity and (un)happiness by foregrounding contemporary representations of urban Indigeneity which challenge previous images of cityscapes as sites of unhappiness leading to annihilation of Indigenous identities. Sara Ahmed’s notions of the normative “happiness scripts” and subversive “unhappy archives” are evoked to argue that while settler colonialism works to preserve its functionality by maintaining certain colonial policies in relation to Indigenous populations, Indigenous storytelling often activates unhappy archives to problematize settler colonial happiness. Tommy Orange’s There There (2018) is used to demonstrate how Indigenous characters struggle with fulfilling the (un)happiness scripts of what contemporary Indigeneity should encompass. They fail or deliberately refuse to subscribe to the pervasive stereotypical images related to the colonial concept of “Indianness”, not only turning the unhappy urban space into a place of intertribal community and belonging, but also turning their unhappy beginnings into happy endings, even if through chaos and violence.

Links

• MUNI/A/1328/2023, interní kód MU: Name: Jazyk, literatura a kultura v anglofonních kontextech I

Investor: Masaryk University, Language, literature and culture in Anglophone contexts I