Wandering Stars Study Guide

Tommy Orange was born in Oakland, California in 1982 and is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma. Growing up, Orange’s father was a leader in the Native American Church, but Orange has said that he did not learn much about Native culture as a child. In his novels, then, Orange has said that he aims to depict characters who struggle with issues of authenticity and identity, as he did when he was younger. Orange studied sound engineering in college and started reading and writing more while working in a bookstore in San Leandro, California, after graduating. From there, he went on to receive an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of Indian Arts. In 2018, he published his first book, There There, a novel that traces an ensemble of Native characters navigating life in and around Oakland, California. The novel received widespread acclaim; it won the Pen/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wandering Stars, Orange’s second novel, is both a prequel and sequel to There There, with several characters from There There appearing in Wandering Stars as well. Orange now teaches at the Institute of Indian Arts.

Wandering Stars begins with Jude’s escape from The Sand Creek Massacre. That massacre occurred in 1864 in present-day Colorado. During the massacre, the U.S. Army murdered at least hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne people, most of whom were women, children, and the elderly. Estimates have recorded the number of people killed at anywhere from about 100 to 700. Jude then goes to Fort Marion, the “prison-castle” in St. Augustine, Florida, which is run by Richard Henry Pratt, who is a character in the novel as well as a historical figure. Historically, Fort Marion was established to hold Native political prisoners and prisoners of war and operated in that capacity through the 1870s. At the prison, Pratt instituted classes in English and other subjects, just as he does in the novel. Pratt then helped found Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879 and served as the superintendent of the school for decades. The mission of the school was to erase Native culture, which is a form of cultural genocide. Residential schools for Native people that aimed to erase Native culture became widespread throughout the 20th century in the U.S., and recent investigations into those schools have uncovered numerous instances of physical and sexual abuse. Wandering Stars also discusses the Native occupation of Alcatraz, which occurred from November 1969 to June 1971. During that occupation, a group of Native people from various tribes took up residence on Alcatraz in protest of oppressive U.S. government policies. The protest began with about 80 people but the number of people on the island reached the hundreds at various times. The protest ended after 19 months.

Wandering Stars functions as both a prequel and sequel to Orange’s first book, There There. Many of the characters from Wandering Stars first appeared in There There, including Opal Viola, Victoria, Jacquie, Jamie, Orvil, Lony, and Loother. There There also tells the story of Orvil’s preparation to dance at a powwow in Oakland and the shooting that occurs there, which becomes the backstory for Orvil’s character and his family in Wandering Stars. Orange has said that he first wanted to write a novel after reading John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, a comic novel that utilizes several innovative narrative techniques. Orange has also cited Roberto Bolaño as an influence; like Wandering Stars, Bolaño’s novel The Savage Detectives presents multiple narrators in a wide variety of styles to tell a kaleidoscopic but cohesive narrative. Several novels by Louise Erdrich detail the harm, pain, and trauma caused by the violence of residential schools for Native people, including The Night Watchman and The Plague of Doves. Wandering Stars also begins with a description of the Sand Creek Massacre; nonfiction books about that massacre include The Sand Creek Massacre by Stan Hoig and A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman. Diane Glancy’s nonfiction book Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education traces the connection between the prison at Fort Marion overseen by Richard Henry Pratt and its connection to residential boarding schools for Native people, along with the violence of those schools and the resulting trauma among Native people.