Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There
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Can Aydın
Can Aydın is a research associate who is currently working on his PhD at TU Dresden in the chair of American Studies with a focus on diversity studies. His dissertation focuses on the contemporary life writings by First Nations authors Billy-Ray Belcourt, Joshua Whitehead, and Terese Marie283 Mailhot in which genre conventions and expectations are transgressed. His research interests include life writing, cookbooks, and comics and their intersections.
Abstract
Indigenous author Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There tells the lives of twelve contemporary Indigenous characters from Oakland. In one chapter, one of the characters, Opal, looks back on her time in Alcatraz, to 1970, when she, her older sister, and her mother moved to Alcatraz and joined the occupation for some months. In this chapter, I explore how Orange’s fiction intersects with the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz, which lasted nineteen months between November 1969 and June 1971. The occupation holds crucial importance for acts of Indigenous self-determination and agency. I argue that Orange’s fictionalization corresponds to the goals of the 1969 occupation in subverting hegemonic US discourses that cater to settler colonial discourses. Orange’s novel does not only give a subjective account of the event but also offers affective dimensions of the occupation that factual evidence cannot provide.
Abstract
Indigenous author Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There tells the lives of twelve contemporary Indigenous characters from Oakland. In one chapter, one of the characters, Opal, looks back on her time in Alcatraz, to 1970, when she, her older sister, and her mother moved to Alcatraz and joined the occupation for some months. In this chapter, I explore how Orange’s fiction intersects with the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz, which lasted nineteen months between November 1969 and June 1971. The occupation holds crucial importance for acts of Indigenous self-determination and agency. I argue that Orange’s fictionalization corresponds to the goals of the 1969 occupation in subverting hegemonic US discourses that cater to settler colonial discourses. Orange’s novel does not only give a subjective account of the event but also offers affective dimensions of the occupation that factual evidence cannot provide.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
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Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
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Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
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Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
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Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
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Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Popular Culture 1
-
Part I: Confinement Narratives on the Screen
-
Cinema and TV Series
- The Individual vs. the Institution: Narratives of Confinement in New Hollywood Cinema 15
- Trapped in Bluebeard’s Castle: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast as a Self-Contradictory Story of Empowerment and Imprisonment 31
- (Dis)ableing the Confinement: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God 47
- Transformative Power of Confinement and Subversion of Identity in The Experiment (2010) 63
- “Where the City Started and the Suburbs Ended”: The (Sub)urban Confinement of Post-Industrial America in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows 87
- Never Let Me Go: Home, Family, and Confinement in Umma 103
- Confinement and Consciousness: Exploring the ‘ Nomadic Consciousness’ in Maid 117
-
Documentaries
- Incarceration Documentaries after the Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography 133
- Dream in Place: Understanding Confinement through the Tactics of Fiction in Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack 151
-
Part II: Confinement Narratives from/about American Prisons
- Claudia Jones and Angela Davis: Literature in Confinement 171
- Confined to the Margins: Necropolitics, American Identity, and Racial Separation in Assata by Assata Shakur 185
- Into the Lone Star Labyrinth: Texas Prison System Reflects The Death Gate Cycle Prison 201
- Our Time on the Rock: Narrating Voluntary Confinement in Tommy Orange’s There There 217
- “Have You Ever Seen a More Focused Killing Machine?” The Extreme Spectacle of Carceral Punishment in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars 235
-
Part III: Confinement Narratives within Performances
- Taylor Swift’s American Retreat: Covid, Cardigans, and Confinement in folklore 253
- In The Devil's Grip: Competing Narratives of Confinement in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X Opera 269
- Index
