New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Dua Lipa's Service95 Book Club shares details about March's Monthly Read: There There by Tommy Orange. The Service95 Book Club will provide exclusive content from Dua and Tommy throughout the month on service95.com and across socials.
On There There, Dua says, "Tommy starts with a brief but sharp history lesson in the prologue of There There, dispelling 400 years of slurs and stereotypes against Native people in 10 fiery pages - almost too painful to bear, but essential to start his story. If you are expecting beads and fry bread, you've come to the wrong book. Orange's characters - 12 'Urban Indians' living modern lives in American cities - are single parents, filmmakers, recovering addicts, survivors of sexual violence and kids searching for meaning. In short: life in all its complexity."
Dua continues, "The connections between the cast reveal themselves bit by bit as events spiral towards a violent and horrific crescendo in the Big Oakland Powwow - an occasion that holds a desperate significance for each of them. Among the tragedy that is foreshadowed throughout, there is also redemption and humanity. It's a stunning story, and I can't wait to hear what you think of it."
In an interview between Dua and Tommy, which is out today, they discuss the brutal treatment of Native people, and the parallels between the American Indian Movement's occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the more recent demonstrations at Standing Rock in North Dakota. Tommy also reveals how he poured himself into his characters and expands upon the novel's tragic ending.
In addition, readers can learn more about the novel's influences through Tommy's reading list and playlist that he has shared exclusively with the Service95 Book Club. Tommy has also performed a reading of an excerpt from the book's prologue, which is available now. Lastly, to round off this month's exclusive content, Service95 has collated a photo essay on Alcatraz that readers can check out now.
Dua's Service95 Book Club is the latest offering from her Service95 platform, which consists of the At Your Service podcast and the flagship Service95 newsletter. Service95 has been praised by The Guardian as "some of the most thought-provoking short-form cultural writing you can find," and the podcast has been lauded by The Sunday Times, Vogue and Vulture. In addition, Spotify named it one of the Best Podcasts of 2022, and praised Dua as "an incredibly thoughtful interviewer with a genuine interest in people, social movements, and the arts."
Tommy
Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the
Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.
3x GRAMMY and 7x BRIT Award-winning global pop powerhouse
Dua Lipa continues to be one of pop music's leading forces with the release of her third album, Radical Optimism. The album went No. 1 in 12 countries, including the UK where it became the biggest album debut from a UK female artist in 2024 and garnered the highest week one sales from a UK female artist since 2021. In the US, the album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking Dua's biggest sales week yet. The New York Times named it a Critic's Pick and hailed it as "an album of nonstop ear candy," along with Variety, who declared it "a joyous blast of pop savvy," The New Yorker, who praised, "the instrumentation is a gleaming and impenetrable expanse, and the main attraction is Lipa," and Vogue, who raved it is "a summary, self-assured slice of pop brilliance…[and] catchy as hell." Following her electric set headlining Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, performing "An Evening With" at London's Royal Albert Hall, and kicking off her Radical Optimism World Tour in Asia, Dua's world tour resumes this March, including two shows at Wembley Stadium that sold out immediately.
