Wandering Stars: A Novel

“Raging Waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

This is the quote that Jude Star says is already a part of him by the time he reads it, and which he names himself after. This quote refers back to the idea of wandering stars throughout the novel and is, of course, the narrative’s namesake. This quote offers a metaphor for the Indigenous American diaspora and the many characters who grapple with their identity as being the earth, or the cosmos, rather than being a part of or from it.

“I was still Bird, beneath all my names, beneath the names for everything I was there, home inside the bones of everything that ever resembled home to me, a core being and beating heart, the booming drum, a song belonging to no one.”

The realization that, despite the Sand Creek Massacre and forced assimilation and the tragedies he and other Indigenous people have endured, a piece of him remains, comes to Jude during a peyote ceremony. Many of the characters throughout the novel will experience a similar sensation, that there is a piece of themselves somewhere within them that is ever-changing and connected to something bigger—that the body becomes the vessel through which characters carry their histories, belongings, and homes while simultaneously being the thing that experiences disconnection through racism and violence.

“Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made.”

Jude reflects on the transcendental power of storytelling as he shares his own stories with his son, Charles. This power is repeated throughout the narrative and is a core motif. Art and Its Transformative Power creates change for many of the characters.

“He has forgotten that he has forgotten things on purpose. This is how he has hidden them away from himself.”

Charles, a survivor of sexual abuse, experiences the neurological impacts of trauma—in this instance, repression. The narrator suggests that such a consequence fractures identity and keeps Charles from knowing parts of himself, a common theme—Land, Place, and Belonging—throughout the novel.

“Surely there was a story he was a part of, that spoke to the purpose of his life?”

Many characters of the novel, starting as early as Charles Star, question their stories and histories because systemic violence and racism, as well as substance use disorder and trauma, have separated them from their own stories. This is, in part, why so many of the characters experience ambiguity in their own identities and remain unsure of where or to whom they belong. This quote speaks to the themes of Land, Place, and Belonging and The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity.

“It's worse when they know what they want and they're hungry for it, white men in this country, they come to take everything, even themselves, they have taken so much they have lost themselves in the taking, and what will be left of such a nation once they are done?”

Opal’s monologue, in which she is speaking to her unborn daughter, reveals that such violence not only fractures the identities of the people who are subject to it but the oppressors and colonizers experience a loss of themselves to be able to commit such violence. Opal wonders what could be left of the world when nobody knows which way is right.

“Wonder if she was saying the word Victory! out loud at some unknown triumph, perhaps the sound of you crying is you came out, that you came out alive, that she Birds a living being, brought another Indian into a country that had been doing its best to disappear you for hundreds of years, and countless ways.”

Throughout Wandering Stars, the characters survive despite genocide, violence, and oppression. This quote demonstrates such resilience, but it also reveals the pain that this resilience carries with it, since Victoria suffers under the weight of her heritage and being detached from it. This highlights the themes of Land, Place, and Belonging and The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity.

“We belong to what we are the way a song belongs to the singer, my heart is a runner and my soul is a winter.”

This quote comes from Charles's writing to Opal as Victoria reads it and suggests that belonging is already a part of Charles and his descendants rather than something they must find or create. Many of the characters come to learn that strengthening their connections to themselves and each other is how they might find belonging, regardless of what’s been taken from them, even while what’s been taken remains a piece they may never find. This quote speaks to the themes of Land, Place, and Belonging and The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity.

“Love was always tied to and obfuscated by obligation.”

This quote, which comes when Sean is thinking about his family, reveals the responsibility attached to love and family. Family is sometimes a great source of pain, as is true for many characters throughout the novel and the weight of family history and one's responsibility to it is at times too much to bear for the characters, supporting the theme of The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity.

“White boys thought the world of themselves, thought the world was themselves, and that anything otherwise was out of place, needed to be noticed or ignored.”

Whiteness becomes a tool that perpetuates many of the characters' feelings that they do not belong since whiteness prescribes a notion that the world is built only for people who are white. The history of the US creates the systemic racism that contributes to this line of thinking and the structure of whiteness as a whole.

“Even if he hadn't been white, everyone was raised with whiteness as the standard and as the gaze, so you had it in you even if you didn't, it was the background sound you only ever noticed got turned off in rare moments when the spotlight shifted temporarily.”

Wandering Stars explores the consequences of systemic racism, including whiteness as something that permeates everyone in order to perpetuate itself. Because systemic racism suggests that whiteness is the norm, Sean recognizes that it maintains power that remains unspoken and assumed until it's pointed out.

“You'll never have to hold the weight of History the same way that people who have to do.”

Sean tells this to his father, who is white. The characters throughout Wandering Stars must carry a history that was created by and for white people and which white people will never understand in the same ways people who've been oppressed by racist systems must. To be white in the United States means that a white person will never understand what it is to have your entire ancestral line victims of mass genocide and cultural violence.

“Their newly made family was a chorus of noise and a throng of pain in waiting, because it was loved, and had been saved, and so loved desperately, knowing that whatever happened to any one of them happened to every one of them.”

This quote is about Opal adopting Jamie's three children: Orvil, Loother, and Lony. This quote is an example of The Impact of History, Generational Trauma, and Violence on Identity that the Red Feather family must endure, and the responsibility to each other because of it.

“A bad thing doesn't stop happening to you just because it stops happening to you.”

Orvil makes this claim about trauma, specifically about being shot at the big Oakland powwow. This quote, however, suggests that the reverberations from mass genocide, like the Sand Creek Massacre, and forced assimilation and abuse at boarding schools like Carlisle, persist even while the events have temporally ended.

“But with things that trick you, it's that you never know you're being tricked while you're being tricked, that's what is tricky.”

Though Orvil says this in reference to becoming dependent on substances, this quote can also represent the many times the United States government made empty promises to Indigenous people throughout history. Jude also describes such an experience when performing Indigenous rituals and not realizing its impact on his own memory and culture until he couldn’t remember where he came from.

“I mean nobody says Indian anymore. Your tribe makes the most sense to say.”

Orvil tells Sean that saying “Indian” is no longer something people do and that naming one’s tribe is the best practice when identifying with his Indigenous heritage. Sean isn't sure how to handle his new discovery that he himself is Indigenous, and Sean also does not know to which tribe he belongs.

“Everyone only thinks we are from the past, but then we're here, but they don't know we're still here, so then it's like we're in the future. like Time Travelers would feel.”

In this quote, Lony identifies historical representations of Indigenous people as overriding contemporary representations of what it is to be an Indigenous American. Because of this lack of representation, Lony describes this feeling as existing across time and space, not belonging in the present moment, even if it’s where he exists.

“Everything that happens to a tribe happens to everyone in the tribe. good and bad.”

This quote is a representation of what occurs to the Red Feather family throughout the novel. Each member of the family bears the impact of the events that occurred to their ancestors and to each other. For example, when Orvil is shot, Loother and Lony both carry that trauma in different ways while simultaneously carrying the trauma of their family's history.

“To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test only ever gives you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person.”

Opal reflects that having to survive isn’t anything more than that: learning to survive again and again, which does not allow for any humanity. After this thought, however, Opal realizes that culture is the humanity that survives regardless of what happens.

“The word planet, which is the same word in German, comes from the Greek meaning wandering star. He said we don't live on a planet, we are the planet, it made us.”

This quote, which Orvil hears as he is watching Planet Earth with Sean, references both the book’s title and the larger motif that many of the characters are themselves Wandering Stars. In this instance, they may also be considered of the planet or, as it's often quoted in the book, “of the Earth.” So, even while the characters may feel a sense of displacement, they are still a part of the broader natural world.

“We all need to see something bigger than what we think is possible. to make us believe.”

Lony tells Orvil this when he is on top of the water tower. This quote suggests that imagination and creation are important in order to cultivate hope, supporting the theme of Art and Its Transformative Power in the narrative.

“Transcendence was why people chose to die, to get high.”

Orvil thinks this as he considers death by suicide, as well as substance use. This quote suggests that in order to overcome the burden of suffering, pain, and love, people might use various tools, like death or drugs, to transcend such pain in order to bear humanity.

“I feel like I'm still trying to get back to who I used to be.”

As Orvil recovers, he says that he is still trying to find himself. His overdose and the shooting were both significant events that fractured Orvil’s sense of self, but his recovery is helping him to find his way back, just as the narrative argues that art and culture are a means by which people can find another sense of self.