ORVIL RED FEATHER, the teenage protagonist of Tommy Orange's novel Wandering Stars, was just beginning high school when he was shot at a powwow in Oakland, California. The stray bullet that hit him made its way into his stomach and stayed there. Although he survived, his family-his two younger brothers; their great-aunt Opal Bear Shield, who raised them; and their recently resurfaced grandmother Jacquie Red Feather-is utterly changed by that moment of violence. To them, "it was as if the hole made in him that day brought a new world out from inside him," one that all five family members must now live in. It's around this time that Orvil is prescribed an opioid, hydromorphone, for his pain. The hole left by the bullet, he thinks, "felt open, and like something was coming through, out of it, asking something of me in return, like it needed to be filled, and here were these pills."
In Wandering Stars, a centuries-spanning epic of a Native family that manages to feel profoundly intimate, Orange writes about liquor, drugs, and even the ominously unlabeled pills that Orvil ends up taking (which he calls "Blanx") as an ambivalent force and goes to lengths to show why his characters intoxicate themselves and how right it can feel to them. Even when these substances cause harm, the path to addiction has a logic to it that's presented without judgment.
With a narrative that begins in the 1800s, the book shows us that addiction recurs through generations of Orvil's family-along with many other things: freckles, musical ability, bullets, a habit of making rubber-band balls, and the parts of Cheyenne belief and history that outlast the U.S. government's brutal efforts to assimilate Native Americans. The details of that national project of cultural genocide are something Orvil and his brothers are only vaguely aware of.
Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin February 26 - March 10, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin February 26 - March 10, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Trapped in Time
A woman relives the same day in a stunning Danish novel.
Polyphonic City
A SOFT, SHIMMERING beauty permeates the images of Mumbai that open Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light. For all the nighttime bustle on display-the heave of people, the constant activity and chaos-Kapadia shoots with a flair for the illusory.
Lear at the Fountain of Youth
Kenneth Branagh's production is nipped, tucked, and facile.
A Belfast Lad Goes Home
After playing some iconic Americans, Anthony Boyle is a beloved IRA commander in a riveting new series about the Troubles.
The Pluck of the Irish
Artists from the Indiana-size island continue to dominate popular culture. Online, they've gained a rep as the \"good Europeans.\"
Houston's on Houston
The Corner Store is like an upscale chain for downtown scene-chasers.
A Brownstone That's Pink Inside
Artist Vivian Reiss's Murray Hill house of whimsy.
These Jeans Made Me Gay
The Citizens of Humanity Horseshoe pants complete my queer style.
Manic, STONED, Throttle, No Brakes
Less than six months after her Gagosian sölu show, the artist JAMIAN JULIANO-VILLAND lost her gallery and all her money and was preparing for an exhibition with two the biggest living American artists.
WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT BRIGHT PINK MEAT THAT LASTS FOR WEEKS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
Deli Meat Is Rotten