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Common Reader

Highlighting the Norfolk State University Common Reader book.

“Talking about literature is not only about talking about literature. It is also examining one’s ideas, identities, thoughts, sense of self.”

-- Christy Craig, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, Fort Hays State University

How to Hold a Book Discussion

Taking part in a book discussion? Keep in mind the points below:

  • Open-mindedness: listen to and respect all points of view. Conversation isn’t just talking. It’s talking and listening. In fact, in a group of 4-8, you’ll be listening more than you are talking! By focusing on listening, you may also benefit from the variety of ideas around the table.
  • Acceptance: suspend judgment as best you can. We all judge one another, but do your best not to. Doing so will enable you to hear new things from others. It also helps everyone feel safer if they think others are trying to not judge them!
  • Curiosity: seek to understand rather than persuade. We’re not here to convince others that we are right and they are wrong. If someone expresses a point of view that seems different from yours, see if you can ask some questions to gain clarity or understanding.
  • Discovery: question assumptions, look for new insights. Insight—seeing more deeply into a topic—can come if we watch for it.
  • Sincerity: speak from your heart and personal experience. What’s important to you, not just your opinions or data you’ve collected. Relate your ideas to your personal experience.
  • Brevity: go for honesty and depth but don’t go on and on. Honesty and depth are important to a good conversation, but so is giving everyone a chance to speak. People are polite. They may not stop you if you go on and on. But you can stop yourself. Try to stay under a couple of minutes.

-From The Complete Hosting Manual

Basic Ground Rules

  1. Haven’t read the book? Come anyway. Not everyone can finish every book, but non-readers may still have valuable insights.
  2. Disagreements about the book. Be gracious! There is no one way to experience or interpret a book. In fact, differing opinions are good.
  3. Members who prefer to socialize. Be gentle but firm. Insist that discussion time be limited to the book. 
  4. Dominating personalities. Never easy. “Let’s hear from some others” is one approach. Some clubs pass an object around the room; you talk only when you hold the object. 

Time Frame

  1. Allow 1 to 1.5 hours for book discussion
    • You can add time for socializing, if you like

Holding the Discussion

  1. With a leader
    • Appoint someone to lead the discussions.
    • Invite an outside facilitator (English teacher, other professor, or librarian).
  2. Without a leader
    • Take turns going around the room, allowing each member to talk about their experience reading the book.
    • Hand out index cards. Ask everyone to write a question or observation; then select one or more to discuss.

-From the ALA Book Discussion Guide

Begin the discussion no more than 5-10 minutes after scheduled time.

Take time to make introductions.

1. During introductions, ask each reader to answer the question, "Did you like the book?" Once introductions are
over, you will have enough comments to get the discussion off to a good start.
2. Ask each reader to choose one word that describes the book.
3. Ask each reader if this is a book similar to what they usually read or not.

If you're leading a book discussion

  1. Choose one question at a time and toss it out to the group.
  2. Select a number of questions, write each on an index card, and pass them out. Each member (or a team of 2 or 3) takes a card and answers the question.
  3. Use a prop (or object) related to the story. It can help stimulate members' thinking about some aspect of the story. It's adult show & tell!
    • •maps, photographs, paintings, food, apparel, a music recording, a film sequence
  4. Pick out a specific passage from the book description, an idea, a line of dialogue—and ask members to comment on it.
    • How does the passage reflect a character...or the work's central meaning...or members' lives or personal beliefs?
  5. Choose a primary character and ask members to comment on him or her. Consider:
    • character traits, motivations, how he/she affects the story's events and characters.
  6. Distribute hand-outs to everyone in order to refresh memories or use as talking points. Identify the primary characters and summarize the plot.

If you're taking part in a book discussion

  1. Avoid "like" or “dislike.” Those terms aren't very helpful for moving discussions forward, and they can make others feel defensive. Instead, talk about your experience, how you felt as you read the book.
  2. Support your views. Use specific passages from the book as evidence for your ideas. This is a literary analysis technique called “close reading.”
  3. Take notes as you read. Write down particularly interesting passages: something that strikes you or, maybe, that you don't understand. Take your notes to the meeting.

-From the ALA Book Discussion Guide

Questions to Contemplate

Discussion Questions for The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates

1 .  How might Coates’s use of personal stories influence the emotions of his readers?

2 .  How might Coates use personal anecdotes and current events to create commentary on broad historical ideas? What personal events can you link to more wide-ranging ideas or issues?

3 .  What is the impact of the cultural and lived experiences that Coates weaves into his personal writing? How would the impact differ if he wrote in a more academic style?

4 . Coates says his writing process is about pressure and failure. In what way is failure part of the development of narrative writing?

5 . On what turning points or important events might Coates focus in his memoir when discussing his father?

6. What factors made Coates different from his peers?

7. Coates uses doubling in his writing. Because he is both protagonist and narrator, he sees himself as both subject and object, both character and storyteller, and at once a participant and an observer in his narration. How does this mirroring of himself strengthen his narrative?

8. How does Coates characterize his father? What is the relationship between them? 

9. How does Coates characterize his brother Big Bill? What is the relationship between them? 

10. Coates refers to the “Knowledge” throughout the book. What does he mean by this term? What is his personal relationship to it? What is his brother Big Bill’s relationship to it?

11. How does Coates define “Knowledge” and “Consciousness,” both individually and relationally to one another?

12. What is the significance of aptitude according to Coates?

13. The book opens with a map of Baltimore where Coates grew up. How did the site of a map, at the beginning of the book affect or situate you as a reader?

From: https://openstax.org/books/writing-guide/pages/1-unit-introduction

 

 

Discussion questions by chapter

The chapter titles are lyrics from songs. How do the titles relate to the chapter and the world Coates lived in?

Chapter 1 - There was a little boy who was misled . . .

Lyric is from Children's Story by Slick Rick. You can listen to it on YouTube here.

What does our education system teach students about Africa and African Americans? Do students begin their studies with slavery? Do they learn about any important intellectual, scientific, or socio-political contributions people of the African diaspora have made? Why do you think this is?

How does Ta-Nehisi’s family confirm stereotypes about African American families? How does the information revealed in chapter 1 disrupt these stereotypes and force the reader to reframe what they may think they know?

How is Ta-Nehisi’s life affected by his familial relationships?

How and why is Howard University considered a “Mecca”? Would you consider NSU a "Mecca" today?

Chapter 2 - Even if it's jazz or the quiet storm. . .

Lyric is from I Ain't No Joke by Eric B. & Rakim. You can listen to it on YouTube here

What is “the Great Knowledge”? How does Ta-Nehisi describe his father’s philosophy of life?

How much do you agree or disagree with the statement that “No matter what Civilization says, academic intelligence is overpraised and ultimately we are animals”?

How is Ta-Nehisi’s status within the community altered when he decides to cry rather than fight?

What happens as a result of Ta-Nehisi’s realization that he is alone? How and why does he make the discovery that he is alone in his world?

Chapter 3 - Africa's in the house, they get petrified

Lyric is from Straight Out of the Jungle by Jungle Brothers. You can listen to it on YouTube here.

What do we learn about Coates' mother in this chapter?

What does the bookstore represent to Coates' father?

What does Coates mean when he writes, "This was what my father deeded--that our Knowledge of Self be more than America, that we understand the brain death that sprawled from the projects to the subdivisions." ?

Chapter 4 - To teach those who can't say my name

Lyric is from I know You Got Soul by Eric B. & Rakim. You can listen to it on YouTube here.

What does Ta-Nehisi mean when he says he “put away childish things” in response to listening to “Lyrics of Fury”?

What does Coates mean when he says, “Under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone”?  Does listening to hip-hop make you feel less alone? If so, how? Why? If not, is there another type of music that makes you feel less alone?

Chapter 5 - This is the Daisy Age

Lyric is from D.A.I.S.Y. Age by De La Soul. You can listen to it on YouTube here

Ta-Nehisi feels “overcome by status” (128) at Poly. What goes wrong, leading to his suspension? Try to explain why he treats his teacher as he does.

What does Ta-Nehisi mean when he describes his father as “conservative, but not in the way of the demonologists who sold us out for tenure and crumbs. More like a man who spurns the false talk of revolution for the humbler mission of resurrecting one soul at a time”? What is the difference between a revolutionary and a missionary? 

What events lead to Ta-Nehisi getting arrested? How does this event change him and his family’s view of him?

“They organized a school to educate their kids, sent them off for college credits at fourteen, and then for a bachelor’s two years later. Everyone wore dashikis and lappas, kufis and head wraps.” How might Afrocentric “freedom schools” benefit Black children? Compare and contrast the experience described with mainstream schools.

Why was drumming so important to Ta-Nehisi? How did it give him back a piece of his identity and connect him to those around him, as well as to his ancestors?

Chapter 6 - Float like gravity, never had a cavity. . .

Lyric is from Buggin' Out by A Tribe Called Quest. You can listen to it on YouTube here

What comfort did Ta-Nehisi find in the people at Sankofa?

What does he mean when he says he had “hands of stone”?

Chapter 7 - Bamboo earrings, at least two pair

Lyric is from Around the Way Girl by LL COOL J. You can listen to it on YouTube here

Explain the self-defeating nature of the moment when Ta-Nehisi says, “I was convinced that my high school career was so marred that I’d never really be considered for admission. So I covered with apathy.” How does the school system build up or break down students’ confidence in their ability to succeed?

Why was Ta-Nehisi so attracted to Ebony? What did she represent for him?

Who was one of the first people to tell Ta-Nehisi that he had a gift for writing? What affect did it have on him?

What was the “flaw that had always been theory” regarding Ta-Nehisi’s father?

Chapter 8 - Use your condom, take sips of the brew

Lyric is from They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) by Peter Rock C.L. Smooth. You can listen to it on YouTube here

What are the four elements of hip-hop? How does mastering any of them correlate to social currency in Ta-Nehisi’s community?

What does Ta-Nehisi mean when he says, “Just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles”? How was everything Ta-Nehisi’s parents did up until this point trying to prepare him for the moment when he would leave his known world for an unknown one?

What forces tug at Ta-Nehisi as the novel ends? How does this connect to how you feel about being in college?

The questions below are general book questions to help get the discussion started.

  • How does the title reflect the book?
  • Is the main character likeable? Why or why not?
  • Did the author leave loose ends? What were they?
  • What do you think the author wanted the reader to get out of the book?
  • Who was your favorite character and why?
  • What makes a minor character memorable? Why is this character important to the story?
  • Would you recommend this book? Why or why not? If yes, what would you say about it?
  • Would this book make a good movie? Who would you cast in the movie and why?
  • What makes the book distinctive?
  • How is the book structured? Flashbacks? From one point of view? Why do you think the author chose to write the book this way?
  • How does the language of the book help convey the theme?
  • Does the author rely heavily on imagery and symbolism?

Questions to ask if the readers didn't like the book

  • At what point did you decide to give up on the book and why?
  • What made you keep reading to the end?
  • Which character did you dislike the most?
  • Does the dialogue sound natural?
  • Would this book have been better in another format? (i.e. as an audiocassette or film)
  • Does the book offer a central idea or premise? What are the problems or issues raised? Are they personal, spiritual, societal, global, political, economic, medical, scientific?
  • What kind of language does the author use? Is it objective and dispassionate? Or passionate and earnest? Is it polemical, inflammatory, sarcastic? Does the language help or undercut the author's premise?
  • Can you point to specific passages that struck you personally—as interesting, profound, silly or shallow, incomprehensible, illuminating?
  • Did you learn something new reading this book? Did it broaden your perspective about a difficult personal issue? Or a societal issue? About another culture in another country... or about an ethnic / regional culture in your own country?

From the ALA Book Discussion Guide