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Leo, 1

Jonathan Alessandro Leo


Prof. Dan Hurley
English 101
10 March 2019
“Title”

We are the author of our life’s story, no matter what our connection with

our ancestor, cause our story holds this personal energies and the relationship

with others thus, creates exciting and special moments in our life which makes

it memorable. See, life is a story, literature speaks it, and represents it.

Literature is what makes us who we are as human beings, literate. It is more

than just a story that is made up. Languages is what makes us humans, it

taught us to be social and to be literate to be able to express our emotions

and feelings towards others. Tommy Orange’s novel, There There, is a unique

story that portrays the things that reflects the Native American history, the

beauty, the violence, the recovery, the memory and the identity of them which

is rooted deeply in their heart. This books discusses mainly about the story of

twelve Native Americans whom faces different challenges in their life, searching

the true meaning of who they truly are, their ethnicity, their authenticity, their

culture, and especially their history/ancestors which is set in Oakland. Dene

Oxendene is one of those 12 characters that the author, Orange writes about

in his book. Oxendene is written as an artist, who face various challenges in

his life trying to make something meaningful and finally being able to make a

documentary movie about Native American stories.


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Dene Oxendene is described as an insecure young man who’s still trying

to figure out who and what he is. He is often being assumed as many races

such as Mexican, Japanese, Chinese and even Salvadoran once however he is

actually native, but “only half true.” (Orange 28), in fact Dene himself “is not

recognizably Native. He is ambiguously nonwhite.” (Orange 28). Not only that,

Oxendene is also insecure with his scent, thinking how people would actually

smell him and he smells like “piss and shit piss and shit his whole life without

knowing it, that everyone’s been afraid to tell him” (Orange 29). This over-

thoughts actually causes him to be very insecure, hence causing him to be

very observant especially towards his surrounding/conservative such as when

he took the train he sees how an old guy sitting up while making sure none of

his belongings is left behind; “He looks to his left and sees an old man

slumped down in his seat.” (Orange 29), or when he attentively observing the

speed of the cars of the train: “The speed of the cars is short, disconnected,

sporadic,” (Orange 29).

Although being hardly seen as Native, Oxendene has already face many

challenges being Native, ‘a burden on his shoulder’, especially with the follow

of Lucas’ tragic death, his uncle. However, this actually pushes him to think of

a new idea to explore which in the same time able to find out more about his

history as Native American while still able to honor his uncle. Dene being a

young man is full of curiosity and ambitious of exploring his culture wanting to

know more especially giving the opportunity to connect with his uncle although
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for only a short period of time. Regardless, his time with his uncle actually

grants him the opportunity to make something memorable, something that has

a special meaning not only to him, but also to his uncle and the society

especially the Native American community. Being a movie director/maker,

Oxendene’s uncle allows Oxendene to actually follow his path to enter the

movie world and nevertheless his uncle’s unfortunate death, Oxendene keeps

on moving forward and motivates him to produce documentary movie about

“Indian stories in Oakland…. There are so many stories here…. That’s just what

our community needs considering how long it’s been ignored, has remained

invisible.” (Orange 40). This documentary movie is actually more than a

storytelling, Oxendene believes that the Native people has been long

abandoned, what he wants is to “pay the storytellers for their stories….to

appreciate.” (Orange 40). But more to that, Oxendene’s vision is to “bring

something new…the Native experience as it’s seen on the screen” (Orange 40).

Oxendene states that for so long Native story in general is being portrayed as

“boring, pathetic or weak or in need of pity…” (Orange 40), however he wants

to bring something different, something unique, something that contains real

passion, and rage the positive energy.

To relate with the “Prologue” chapter from this Novel, Orange actually in

a way describes similarly like what Oxendene’s vision through his movie which

is to change people’s perspective towards the Native ethnicity, to change how

the media has been wrongly portrayed as the so called “Native American
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Indian” which is almost totally different from what it actually is. Orange

expresses his emotion about how easy our generation it is to be persuade

“We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite

easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and

current state as a people.” (Orange 7).

Works Cited

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