Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Jubilee:
1. Upon her mother's death (at the heart-breaking age of 29, with 15 children), Vyry is sent to work in the plantation household where she encounters the cruelty of Missy Salina. Why is Vyry treated with such viciousness? Even more important, how does Vyry sustain herself through the brutality—what enables her to survive? How does Lillian treat Vyry and how does her treatment change over time?
2. What other kinds of inhuman punishments does Vyry witness?
3. Aside from the art of cooking, what else does Aunt Sally teach Vyry that will stand her in good stead in life?
4. Prior to the 1960's most accounts of slavery were written by and seen through the perspectives of white Anglo-Americans. Jubilee is one of the first books to break from that traditional telling. Talk how reading the novel through African-American eyes makes a difference in what we learn about the South's antebellum and reconstruction eras.
5. Talk about the role that faith plays in Vyry's life. How does it prevent her from falling into bitterness and despair?
6. Discuss Vyry's dream about a door to freedom and the man who will not give her the key? Symbolically, what might the dream represent?
7. Why does Vyry remain to help Miss Lillian after the war is over? What keeps her on the plantation when other former slaves, May Liza, Caline and Jim, leave?
8. What was the irony of the long hoped for Emancipation? In what ways were the Reconstruction years more frightening, perhaps even more painful, than the years of slavery? What about Jim's observation that freedom seems to do them no good when all they do is work with little to show for their efforts?
9. Some reviewers felt it was unfortunate that Walker drew on stereotypes to move the story forward. On the other hand, some of the characters, while not fully developed, represent an aggregate of historic individuals: cruel overseer, poor whites, angry black men, spoiled masters, and so on. Point out which characters seem to represent types...and which "types."
10. How do you feel about Vyry's choice in the end between Innis and Randall Ware?
11. In what way can this book be seen as a "coming-of-age" story for Vyry—a story in which a young person matures and comes to take her place in the adult world?
12. Jubilee is a true account of Margaret Walker's great-grandmother. Talk about what you've learned as a result of reading this work? Have you gained a deeper, more personal understanding of slavery...or the politics of Reconstruction, or the activities of the Ku Klux Klan?
13. What other books have you read about this time period? Beloved by Toni Morrison? Roots by Alex Haley, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe? Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell? How does Jubilee compare with any of these works?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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