Ep. 310 The Absence of Story with Tommy Orange

The Stacks

Traci Thomas

Literature, Society & Culture, Books, Arts

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tommy Orange joins The Stacks today to discuss his new novel Wandering Stars. We talk about writing this prequel/sequel to his debut nove,l the Pulitzer Prize finalist, There There. Tommy reveals how he thinks about the relationship between faith and addiction, and why he writes about Oakland. He also talks about waiting until adulthood to finally see himself represented in popular culture, and how not seeing himself is a driving force in his work. Traci also asks Tommy if he has any plans to write nonfiction.

There are no spoilers in this episode.

The Stacks Book Club selection for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss the book on March 27th with Elise Hu.

You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website:

https://thestackspodcast.com/2024/03/13/ep-310-tommy-orange

Episode Transcript

Connect with Tommy: Twitter

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Transcript

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0:15.8	Hi everybody I have some exciting news. I am launching a substack. I know I keep telling you how I'm not a writer and I'm still not a writer but I am going to be writing about reading over on Substack. The Substack is called unstacked and you can find it at Tracy Thomas.substack.com. There will be free options every Friday. There will be a bunch of
0:21.8	weekly roundups, announcements, all the shit I'm into,
0:24.8	and then if you want to upgrade yourself to the paid subscription, I'm going to have author
0:29.0	interviews, bonus episodes, anticipated reads, book pairings, community chats, all sorts of stuff.
0:35.0	So that sounds like something you'd be into.
0:37.4	Go to Tracy Thomas.substac.com and join unstacked. And of course I got a special offer for you if you go to
0:45.4	Tracy Thomas dot sub-stack.com slash the Stax 10 you get 10% off your first year
0:51.8	membership of unstacked.
0:54.4	You have from now until April 4th to redeem.
0:57.8	Again, that's Tracy Thomas.
1:00.0	Substac.com slash the Stacks 10% off unstacked. Okay that's enough. Let's listen to this episode. Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your
1:21.1	host Tracy Thomas and today I'm speaking with Tommy Orange, who is the author of
1:25.7	There There, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and now he's back with a brand
1:30.0	new novel called Wandering Stars.
1:32.4	Wandering Stars is a sweeping sweeping heart-wrenching story
1:34.9	that begins in 1864 Colorado and follows several generations of a Native American
1:39.9	family cursed by institutional indoctrination.
1:43.2	The book deals with faith, addiction,
1:44.9	and generational trauma, and we talk about all that,
1:47.5	and of course, a lot more on today's episode,
1:50.2	including My and Tommy's shared love of Oakland, which is of course our hometown.
1:56.0	Remember, Elise Hugh will be back on March 27th to discuss our book club pick,
	...

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