Some of us came to the cities to escape the reservation. We stayed after fighting in the Second World War. After Vietnam too. We stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can’t leave a war once you’ve been, you can only keep it at bay — which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets. The quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway-towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced.

Tommy Orange: „There There“, Vintage, © Tommy Orange 2018