There There by Tommy Orange

This is on Obama's reading list for this year, and while there is always some overlap with other "Best of" lists, I do love to see what he was reading, and this year he included some things that were published in years gone by.
This is a book that while relatively short in length, covers a continuum of the American Indian experience in the modern world.  Orange, who is from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, utilizes first, second and third-person narration to incredible effect, creating a multi-voiced novel that effectively reflects an entire community, old and young, urban and reservation, traditional and assimilated. One narrator is an adult with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, the result of a one night assault that occurred during the protest on Alcatraz, whose mother is the kind of help you would expect, and who gives voice to that experience.  It is both sad and somehow, in the midst of it all, also hopeful.  It is strong true voice.