Digital Media, Urbanity, and Futurity of Native American Literature in Tommy Orange’s There There

This article explores how Tommy Orange's There There (2018) reconfigures urban Native identity within a contemporary setting shaped by urban life and digital media. Native Americans have long been represented in literature and mainstream media as figures tied to a precolonial, pure, and vanishing past. By contrast, There There centers the lives of urban Indians and challenges representational frameworks that confine Native identity to land, tradition, and historical loss. The novel further reveals the ambivalent nature of digital networks, which simultaneously expand the possibilities of Native identity while exposing new forms of vulnerability and risk. The characters turn to digital spaces in attempts to confront and cope with the intergenerational traumas of settler colonialism―manifested in poverty, illness, addiction, and violence―yet these same spaces can deepen alienation and even amplify violence. Ultimately, Orange renders Native existence in the present tense, pointing toward a new direction for Native American literature and insisting that Indigenous futurity can emerge only through sustained communal efforts to remain connected to history and tradition.