Team Tommy Orange

In Tommy Orange's "The Team," there are a couple of different ways that the term "team" is used.  The team refers to the character's running team at one point.  It also refers to a team of the character's family members or the team of the character's self.  One meaning of the team that stuck out to me was at the very end of the story where Tommy Orange states that the team is the whole human race.  I interpreted this statement as how people need to work together as a team for the good of the human race as a whole in combatting the coronavirus pandemic.  Tommy Orange definitely makes it clear that this idea of the team as a human race at the end relates to the pandemic by mentioning isolation and hoping for a cure or miracle.  

I feel like this idea of a team as a collective whose purpose and actions are about the whole rather than the individual parts could relate to my understanding of Tommy Orange's There There.  In the novel, there are times where the Native Americans work together as a team in this way.  For example, when Opal is at Alcatraz with her family, the situation refers to the Occupation of Alcatraz in which Native Americans came together as a team to protest for the good of Native Americans as a whole.  I also think that using "we" in the prologue shows that Tommy Orange and other Native Americans today associate themselves with all of their ancestors as Native Americans.  I think that this could show that Native Americans continue to work together as a whole and think about their ancestors as well rather than just themselves.  I feel like there are a lot of other interpretations of how the idea of a team plays out in Orange's novel too.