Flames and Floods: Elemental Metaphors in Tommy Orange’s There There and Natalie Diaz’s “exhibits from The American Water Museum”

Flames and Floods: Elemental Metaphors in Tommy Orange’s There There and Natalie Diaz’s “exhibits from The American Water Museum”

This paper puts into conversation Tommy Orange’s realistic fiction novel There There and Natalie Diaz’s collection of poetry Postcolonial Love Poem, specifically “exhibits from The American Water Museum,” to examine their usage of elemental metaphors. The metaphors they both construct illustrate the oppression of Indigenous American children in small but poignant excerpts. What this paper seeks to address is the connection between There There’s analogy of a burning building and “exhibits from The American Water Museum’s” titular water museum. These metaphors depict Indigenous children as being stuck in two harmful positions in society: too young to exert control over their own life, yet still bearing the brunt of oppression against Indigenous people. This inquiry also seeks to contextualize both of these works of literature via their real-world referents. The nonfiction works of Adam Mazo and Ben Pender-Cudlip’s Dawnland and Rebecca Nagle’s This Land podcast provide compelling support for this essay’s exploration of the importance of these pieces of literature’s metaphors. These media guide us through Indigenous people’s accounts of being removed from their homes and a Supreme Court case that challenged the Indian Child Welfare Act, respectively. Although this paper examines the brutality of these events, it is particularly important to recognize the hope integrated into these works, fiction and non-fiction alike. Adults and, more generally, people with power have the opportunity to change the world for the better and address these systemic injustices.