Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Nayeri) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
1. Saba invents a life for Mahtab that parallels her own. How or why does she choose these particular scenes or moments of Mahtab’s life to imagine? How do the stakes of Mahtab’s decisions change over the course of the book as Saba herself grows up and her own desires evolve?

2. “The beauty of being Mahtab is that you need no partner at all,” Saba tells Khanom Omidi in one of her descriptions of her sister’s American life. Why is this idea so beautiful to Saba? How does it foreshadow the decisions she will make later in her own life?

3. In what ways is A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea a story about storytelling? What are some important narratives that the characters create for one another, or for themselves? What are the effects of these stories in the novel as a whole?

4. The stories told by the characters do not necessarily have to be the truth in order to be honest. What kinds of untruths are told in this book? How are they positive? How are they negative?

5. Talk about the book’s four first-person narrators: Khanom Basir, Khanom Mansoori, Khanom Omidi, and Dr. Zohreh. How do these women’s perspectives change your understanding of Saba’s life story, especially the disappearance of her mother and sister? Why are their insights important?

6. Discuss the status of women in this book. In what ways are they oppressed and mistreated? In what ways are they revered and powerful? How do Saba and Ponneh deal with these tensions? In this society, how is it meaningful that Saba grew up with a father but no mother?

7. Khanom Basir constantly criticizes the way Saba’s mother raised her and Mahtab before her disappearance. From what you know of Maman, do you agree with Khanom Basir? Did Maman’s boldness make her a bad mother? Did she put her daughters in jeopardy, or did she teach them how to be independent women? Khanom Basir says, “God will never forgive Bahareh for her impractical ways, for teaching her daughter to search for meaning in illegal nothings.” Did this lesson in fact ruin Saba’s life, or did it save it?

8. “Good-byes are such luxuries,” Khanom Basir says. Which is worse for Saba: the loss of her family, or the uncertainty surrounding it?

9. How does Ponneh’s guilt about Farnaz’s execution resemble Saba’s guilt about Mahtab’s drowning?

10. After harboring so much hatred for him, why does Saba ultimately feel so bad letting Abbas die?

11. Saba wants her freedom, but what exactly is she longing to be free from? Her past? The inevitable consequences of a future in Iran? Longing itself? Discuss.
(Questions from the author's website.)

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