18 Feb 2021
- Answer any three questions from the list for your book.
- Does the process of writing her memoir generate for Mailhot a burgeoning sense of redemption? Does her story follow the typical arc from suffering to happiness or not?
- At one point, Mailhot quips, “Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves.” She also writes that “no one wants to know why Indian women leave or where they go.” Why does it seem that native women are treated worse than white women? Is that what Mailhot is saying?
- In what way is Mailhot’s story reflective of the way a marginalized people have suffered at the hands of a majority? In what ways in this memoir not only about one woman’s struggles against oppression, but about a whole community’s?
- Heart Berries is a very personal book. In what ways does the fact it is a memoir make the narrative more interesting for you? What about her personal story can you relate to? What speaks to you because it’s a personal narrative? What makes the personal narrative work better in this form than a if it was a fictitious story and not about Mailhot’s own life? Does the fact that it is so personal help you connect with the narrator?