The Color Purple 
Alice Walker, 1982
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156028356


Summary
Winner, 1983 Pulitizer Prize

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her.

Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—February 9, 1944
• Where—Eatonton, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
• Awards—National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, 1983;The
  Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the
  Arts; The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of
  Arts & Letters; The Radcliffe    Institute Fellowship, the
  Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim  Fellowship
• Currently—San Francisco, California

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple.

Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth child of sharecroppers. As well as being African American, her family has Cherokee, Scottish and Irish lineage. Although she grew up in Georgia, she has stated that she often felt displaced there.

In her book Alice Walker: A Life, author Evelyn C. White talks about an incident when Walker, who was eight year old at the time, was injured when her brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. She became blinded in one eye as a result. In the book, White suggests this event had a large impact on Walker, especially when a white doctor in town swindled her parents out of $250 they paid to repair her injury. Walker refers to this incident in her book Warrior Marks, a chronicle of female genital mutilation in Africa, and uses it to illustrate the sacrificial marks women bear that allow them to be "warriors" against female suppression.

After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on full scholarship in 1961 and later transferred up north to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, graduating in 1965. Walker became interested in the U.S. civil rights movement in part due to the influence of activist Howard Zinn, who was one of her professors at Spelman College. Continuing the activism that she participated in during her college years, Walker returned to the South where she became involved with voter registration drives, campaigns for welfare rights, and children's programs in Mississippi.

In 1965, Walker met and later married Mel Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They became the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi . This brought them a steady stream of harassment and even murderous threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca in 1969, divorcing 9 years later.

Walker's first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence, and she took a brief sabbatical from writing when she was in Mississippi working in the civil rights movement. Walker resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. Magazine as an editor before moving to northern California in the late 1970s. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was a large source of inspiration for Walker's writing and subject matter. In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the gravesite.

In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first work of fiction, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. The novel dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of Walker's own experiences.

In 1982, Walker would publish what has become her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple. The story of a young black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchal black culture was a resounding commercial success. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie as well as a 2005 Broadway musical.

Walker wrote several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing The Secret of Joy (which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple) and has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work.

Her works typically focus on the struggles of African Americans, particularly women, and their struggle against a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle.

Additionally, Walker has published several short stories, including the 1973 "Everyday Use: for your grandmama." This story contains Walker's traditional subjects of feminism and racism against African Americans.She has one child, Rebecca Walker, from her marriage to Mel Leventhal. Rebecca is also an author and in 2000 published a memoir entitled Black White and Jewish, chronicling her parents' relationship and how it affected her childhood. Musician/Comedian Reggie Watts is Walker's second cousin;

Walker discussed her love affair with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in a December 2006 interview with The Guardian, explaining why they did not go public with their relationship, saying "[the relationship] was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours."

In 1983, The Color Purple won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Walker the first African-American woman to win, as well as the National Book Award. Walker also won the 1986 O. Henry Award for her short story "Kindred Spirits", published in Esquire magazine in August of 1985. She has also received a number of other awards for her body of work (see above).

Most recently, on December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Alice Walker into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

Existing criticism of Walker's work has centered largely on the depiction of African American men, in particular relating to the novel The Color Purple. When The Color Purple was published, there was some criticism of the portrayal of male characters in the book. The main concern of much of the criticism was that the book appeared to depict the male characters as either mean and abusive (Albert/"Mister") or as buffoons (Harpo). This criticism intensified when the film was released, as the narrative of the film cut a significant portion of the eventual resolution and reconciliation between Albert and Celie.

Walker addressed some of these criticisms in The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult 1996. The book was a semi-autobiography, discussing specific events in Walker's life, as well as the perspective of experiencing reaction to The Color Purple twice, once as a book and then as the movie was made. The book also chronicled her struggle with Lyme disease. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews 
The cumulative effect is a novel that is convincing because of the authenticity of its folk voice...a striking and consummately well-written novel. Alice Walker's choice and effective handling of the epistolary style has enabled her to tell a poignant tale of women's struggle for equality and independence.
Mel Watkins - The New York Times 


Alice Walker once told an interviewer, "The black woman is one of America's greatest heroes. . . . She has been oppressed beyond recognition."

The Color Purple is the story of how one of those American heroes came to recognize herself recovering her identity and rescuing her life in spite of the disfiguring effects of a particularly dreadful and personal sort of oppression. The novel focuses on Celie, a woman lashed by waves of deep trouble—abandonment, incest, physical and emotional abuse—and tracks her triumphant journey to self-discovery, womanhood, and independence. Celie's story is a pointed indictment of the men in her life—men who betrayed and abused her, worked her like a mule and suppressed her independence—but it is also a moving portralt of the psychic bonds that exist between women and the indestructible nature of the human spirit.

The story of Celie is told through letters: Celie's letters to God and her sister Nettle, who is in Africa, and Nettle's letters to Celie. Celie's letters are a poignant attempt to understand her own out-of-control life. Her difficulties begin when, at the age of fourteen, she is raped by her stepfather, who then apparently sells away the two children born of that rape. Her sister Nettle runs away to escape the abuse, but Celie is married off to Albert, an older man that she refers to simply as "Mr." for most of the novel. He subjects her to tough work on his farm and beats her at his whim. But Celie finds the path to redemption in two key female role models: Sophia, an independent woman who refuses to be taken advantage of by her husband or any man, and Shug, a sassy, independent singer whom Albert loves. It is Shug who first offers Celie love, friendship, and a radically new way of looking at life.

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking about him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?) Not the little wildflowers. Nothing."
"Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ______'s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall.

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightning, floods, and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Finally, Celie leaves Albert to follow her own desires and discover her own talents and abilities. The novel ends in celebration: Celie is reunited with her sister and even the demonic Albert gets a shot at redemption.
 
The Color Purple is one of the most successful and controversial books ever written by a black woman. It was an international bestseller, won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1985 was made into a much-discussed movie directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie and novel provoked controversy about Walker's portrayal of black men, which many found offensive and one-dimensional. Of course, Walker’s book has outlived both the movie and its critics; its no-holds-barred portrayal of black male-female relations broadened the trail blazed by her hero, Zora Neale Hurston. The novel is a wonderful fulfillment of its author's mission: to tell the untold stories of those black American heroes who withstood the gaudiest abuse a racist, sexist society could offer and emerged triumphant.
Sacred Fire

Discussion Questions 
1. In Celie’s first letter to God, she asks for a sign to let her know what is happening to her. Discuss the way confusion and deception become powerful tools for those characters who want to take advantage of Celie. Unravel the layers of lies that are told to her throughout the novel, perhaps making lists that compare the fiction she is expected to believe with the truth about her world. These canbe concrete (Celie’s impression that Pa is too poor to provide properly for her, and the later realization that he had more resources than he ever lets on) or abstract (the assertion that Celie is unintelligent, though she demonstrates constant intelligence in planning for her safety and that of her sister). Ask the students to recall their own experience with a revelation: when in their lives has the truth set them free?

2. What is the effect of not knowing Albert’s last name? In early novels, it was not uncommon for authors to use a blank in place of a character’s name, to create the illusion that the character was someone the reader might know—someone whose identity had to be kept secret. What does it mean that Celie must call her husband Mr. ____? When does she at last begin calling him by his first name?

3. Why does Albert tell Harpo to begin beating his wife, Sofia? Why is it so important to Harpo that his wife have no will of her own? Is his relationship with Squeak (Mary Agnes) fulfilling? What do these scenes tell us about the nature of abusive cycles? Is cruelty something that is taught—something that is unnatural? In your opinion, what does it take for someone (male or female) to deserve true respect?

4. Just as Celie grew up being told she was inferior, Shug Avery was always told she was evil. What are your impressions of Shug, from the photo Celie sees early on, to the end of the novel, when Celie and Albert have united in their devotion to Shug? What does Shug teach Celie about being loved, and about finding one’s true self? What price does Sofia pay for being her true self?

5. What does it take for Celie to finally reach her boiling point and reject oppression?

6. What is Celie’s opinion of Grady and his haze of addiction?

7. Why is it difficult for Shug to commit to the people who love her? In what ways does Shug bring both pleasure and heartache to them?

8. Nettie’s life with Corrine and Samuel gives her the first semblance of a healthy family life she has ever known, but Corrine’s jealousy taints this. Only the memory of that crucial early scene, when Celie lays eyes on her daughter at the store, absolves Nettie just before Corrine dies. The Color Purple brims with these intricate turns of plot. List the seemingly minor scenes that turn out to be pivotal in the lives of the characters.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Nappily Ever After
Trisha R. Thomas
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780609808986

Summary
Venus Johnston has a great job, a beautiful home, and a loving live-in boyfriend named Clint, who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She has a weekly beauty-parlor date with Tina, who keeps Venus's long, processed hair slick and straight. Ever since childhood, the tedious hours in the salon and the harsh, burning chemicals have grated on Venus, and increasingly she dreams of cutting off her beautiful "good" hair.

When her boyfriend keeps balking at commitment, and the thought of another hour at the salon is just too much, Venus decides to give it up— all of it. She trades in the long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends Clint packing. It's a bold declaration of independence—and one that has effects she never could have imagined. Reactions from friends and coworkers range from concern to contempt to outright condemnation.

When Clint moves on and starts dating a voluptuous, long-haired beauty, Venus is forced to question what she really wants out of life. With wit, resilience, and a lot of determination, she finally learns what true happiness is...on her own terms. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1966
• Where—San Diego, California, USA
• Education—California State University, Los Angeles
• Awards—Finalist: Gold Pen Best New Fiction Writer; NAACP
   Image Award; Essence Magazine Story Teller of the Year
• Currently—lives in Riverside, California

Trisha R. Thomas was born in San Diego, California, and now lives in Riverside, happily ever after, with her husband and two children. She is the author of six novels, including Nappily Ever After (2000), Roadrunner (2002), Would I Lie to You? (2004) Nappily Married (2007), Nappily Faithful (2008), and Nappily in Bloom (2009). (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Nappily Ever After is a vibrant tale of a young woman's journey to independence. The characters are real and emerge from this novel as people you actually know. It's an exquisitely passionate novel from an immensely gifted new author.
Pamela Walker-Williams - Page-Turner Network

Venus Johnson's cry for freedom echoes throughout this gripping page-turner as a series of self-revealing choices. Defying the pleas of her perm-toting hairdresser, Venus shaves off her long hair after years of chemical straightening. Her shockingly sparse Afro screams, "affirm me as I am—a beautiful sistah inside and out.
Black Issues Book Review

African-American advertising agency executive Venus Johnston has had enough. Enough of the painful, expensive hours spent relaxing her "good" hair and enough of her four-year relationship with medical intern Clint Fairchild, which has lasted too long without a ring. She shaves her hair to a quarter-inch stubble, tells Clint to pack his bags and spends the rest of Thomas's empowering debut novel building a new life to match the new woman she's become. Clint, on the rebound, meets beautiful, longhaired and marriage-ready Kandi Treboe and proposes on an impulse, despite evidence that he's not over Venus. Meanwhile, Venus confronts issues of sexual harassment and racism in her predominantly white Washington, D.C., firm, where she begins to receive threatening notes. The crisis at work fuels Venus's fears that she's not strong enough to survive her new freedom. Has she made a mistake by abandoning the security of her boyfriend and her long, straight hair? Kandi develops into a complex character, with her own set of concerns and a sense of humor about the lovers' triangle. Her perspective provides an interesting counterpoint to Venus's obsession with the consuming culture surrounding black women's hair. Clint's confusion over his choice between the two women is treated honestly, and Venus's discovery that she has moved to new psychological territory carries emotional weight. This exploration of an African-American woman's journey to self-acceptance is not without flaws (spotty writing and loose ends tied up too fast), but Thomas refuses to let her characters slide into stereotype, and she keeps the pace fast and funny.
Publishers Weekly

Thomas offers painful but amusing insights into the politics of beauty, black culture, and male-female relationships; her first novel places her in a league with Terry MacMillan and Bebe Moore Campbell. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

A young black woman decides to stop fussing with her hair, and changes her life in the process. Venus Johnson has a successful career in cosmetics advertising, some great girlfriends, and a live-in love who's (yes!) a doctor. But pediatrician Clint has been content with their relationship just as it is and doesn't seem any too interested in ever making a real commitment. He likes her just as she is, too, including her long, straight, processed hair. Fed up, Venus asks her very surprised hairdresser to cut it all off—and promptly kicks Clint out, just like that. The handsome doctor is baffled, but there's another woman ready and waiting, of course: Kandi, whose hair is equally long, soft, and processed. Venus has second thoughts about her impulsive action, but she's got a few other things on her mind at the moment: a lecherous colleague and the poison-pen letters someone's been sending her at the office. Her friends, family, and coworkers weigh in with comments, mostly negative, about her very short hair, but Venus is thrilled to have put an end to her tedious hours in beauty salons and her general obsession with her appearance. Let Clint marry his sweet Kandi, Venus decides; she's found herself—and freedom. Irresistibly cheerful, feel-good feminism underpins this pleasant little tale, although the men are in no way villainous, and the talented author writes just as sympathetically from a male point of view. Lively dialogue and fresh characterization enrich the barely-there plot, which is all Thomas needs to make her point: It's what inside that counts. A slight but winning debut.
Kirkus Reviews

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 Nappily Ever After:

1. Talk about the significance for the African-American culture of so-called "good" hair. Why does Venus decide to cut it off? How do you feel about the reactions of her lover, friends and family to her shorn hair?

2. What does all this (in #1, above) say about the role of female beauty in the African-American culture? Is the emphasis on appearance different from the larger US (or world) culture?

3. Discuss the rivalry between Venus and Kandi, Venus's replacement in Clint's affections. You might even talk about the two names and what they could suggest about the women.

4. How do you feel about the main characters? We are meant, of course, to sympathsize with Venus, but is there sympathy for Kandi...or Clint?

5. What does Venus learn by the end of the book? And the others—what, if anything, do they learn?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Room 
Emma Donoghue, 2010
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781443449625

Summary 
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another. (From the publisher.)

See the 2015 movie with Brie Larson (Oscar winner) and Jacob Trimblay.

Author Bio
• Birth—October 24, 1969
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College Dublin; Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—Irish Book Award
• Currently—lives in London, Ontario, Canada


Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland, the youngest of eight children. She is the daughter of Frances (nee Rutledge) and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue. Other than her tenth year, which she refers to as "eye-opening" while living in New York, Donoghue attended Catholic convent schools throughout her early years.

She earned a first-class honours BA from the University College Dublin in English and French (though she admits to never having mastered spoken French). Donoghue went on receive her PhD in English from Girton College at Cambridge University. Her thesis was on the concept of friendship between men and women in 18th-century English fiction.

At Cambridge, she met her future life partner Christine Roulston, a Canadian, who is now professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Western Ontario. They moved permanently to Canada in 1998, and Donoghue became a Canadian citizen in 2004. She lives in London, Ontario, with Roulston and their two children, Finn and Una.

Works
Donoghue has been able to make a living as a writer since she was 23. Doing so enables her to claim that she's never had an "honest job" since she was sacked after a summer as a chambermaid. In 1994, at only 25, she published first novel, Stir Fry, a contemporary coming of age novel about a young Irish woman discovering her sexuality.

Donoghue is perhaps best known for her 2010 novel, Room—its popularity practically made her a household name. Room spent months on bestseller lists and won the Irish Book Award; it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange prize, and  the (Canadian) Governor General's Award. In 2015, the novel was adapted to film. Donoghue wrote the screenplay, which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Bafta Award.

Since Room, Donoghue has published seven books, her most recent released in 2020—The Pull of the Stars. (Adapted from the author's website and Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2016.)

Book Reviews
Here come the debating points that are embedded in Ms. Donoghue's story. Was the world inside Room somehow safer than the world outside? Will it be damaging for Jack to have to share his mother with new people in her life—or with the people she left behind? Will Ma still be content to do nothing but interact with her frisky son? Is it harder to choose freely from a whole bowl of lollipops than to have no choice at all? Room is sophisticated in outlook and execution, but it's not too complicated to use actual lollipops to frame that theoretical question. Fortunately Ms. Donoghue makes both Ma and Jack too unpredictable for any of those answers to be easy.
Janet Maslin - New York Times

Jack's voice is one of the pure triumphs of the novel: in him, [Donoghue] has invented a child narrator who is one of the most engaging in years—his voice so pervasive I could hear him chatting away during the day when I wasn't reading the book. Donoghue rearranges language to evoke the sweetness of a child's learning without making him coy or overly darling… Through dialogue and smartly crafted hints of eavesdropping, Donoghue fills us in a on Jack's world without heavy hands or clunky exposition…a truly memorable novel…It presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live.
Aimee Bender - New York Times Book Review

[O]ne of the most affecting and subtly profound novels of the year.... Not too cute, not too weirdly precocious, not a fey mouthpiece for the author's profundities, Jack expresses a poignant mixture of wisdom, love and naivete that will make you ache to save him—whatever that would mean: Delivering him to the outside world? Keeping him preserved here forever?…until you finish it, beware talking about Room with anyone who might clumsily strip away the suspense that's woven through its raw wonder. You need to enter this small, harrowing place prepared only to have your own world expanded.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

[A] riveting, powerful novel.... Donoghue's inventive storytelling is flawless and absorbing. She has a fantastic ability to build tension in scenes where most of the action takes place in the 12-by-12 room where her central characters reside. Her writing has pulse-pounding sequences that cause the reader's eyes to race over the pages to find out what happens next.... Room is likely to haunt readers for days, if not longer. It is, hands down, one of the best books of the year.
Liz Raftery - Boston Globe

Only a handful of authors have ever known how to get inside the mind of a child and then get what they know on paper. Henry James, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and, more recently, Jean Stafford and Eric Kraft come to mind, and after that one gropes for names. But now they have company. Emma Donoghue's latest novel, Room, is narrated by a 5-year-old boy so real you could swear he was sitting right beside you.... Room is so beautifully contrived that it never once seems contrived. But be warned: once you enter, you'll be Donoghue's willing prisoner right down to the last page.
Malcolm Jones - Newsweek

[T]he developments in this novel—there are enough plot twists to provide a dramatic arc of breathtaking suspense—are astonishing.... While there have been several true-life stories of women and children held captive, little has been written about the pain of re-entry, and Donoghue's bravado in investigating that potentially terrifying transformation grants the novel a frightening resonance that will keep readers rapt.
Publishers Weekly

Gripping, riveting, and close to the bone, this story grabs you and doesn't let go. Donoghue skillfully builds a suspenseful narrative evoking fear and hate and hope—but most of all, the triumph of a mother's ferocious love. Highly recommended for readers of popular fiction. —Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty.
Library Journal

Room is beautifully written as a first-person narrative from Jack’s perspective, and within it, Donoghue has constructed a quiet, private, and menacing world that slowly unbends with a mother and son’s love and determination. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

Talented, versatile Donoghue relates a searing tale of survival and recovery, in the voice of a five-year-old boy.... Donoghue brilliantly shows mother and son grappling with very different issues as they adjust to freedom....  Wrenching, as befits the grim subject matter, but also tender, touching and at times unexpectedly funny.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think the entire book is told in Jack’s voice? Do you think it is effective?

2. What are some of the ways in which Jack’s development has been stunted by growing up in Room? How has he benefited?

3. If you were Ma, what would you miss most about the outside world?

4. What would you do differently if you were Jack’s parent? Would you tell Jack about the outside world from the start?

5. If Ma had never given birth to Jack, what would her situation in Room be like?

6. What would you ask for, for Sundaytreat, if you were Jack? If you were Ma?

7. Describe the dynamic between Old Nick and Ma. Why does the author choose not to tell us Old Nick’s story?

8. What does joining the outside world do to Jack? To Ma?

9. What role do you think the media play in the novel?

10. In a similar situation, how would you teach a child the difference between the real world and what they watch on television?

11. Why are we so fascinated by stories of long-term confinement?

12. What were you most affected by in the novel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Commoner 
John Burnham Schwartz, 2007
Knopf Doubleday
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400096053


Summary  
It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir.

After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.

Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1965
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Harvard
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, USA


John Burnham Schwartzis the author of the novels The Commoner, Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days, and Reservation Road, which was made into a motion picture based on his screenplay, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Connelly.

His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times and The New Yorker. He lives with his wife and their son in Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)

See author's website for interviews.

Book Reviews 
Out of this heart-wrenching history, Schwartz has woven a delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing. He has imaginatively reconstructed the private story while remaining largely true to the scant details that have been reported to the public…Schwartz has clearly done extensive research into the lives of the empress and the crown princess and seems, as well, to have had extraordinary access to the Imperial Household Agency, whose members are the strictly traditional guardians of Japan's royal family and its elaborate court life. He vividly evokes the secrets and ceremonies of the imperial palace, including the wedding of Haruko and the crown prince and the ritual called the Daijosai, which takes place on the occasion of the new emperor's coronation and is performed by him alone and unseen. It's magical to have the curtain imaginatively lifted on these mysteries.
Lesley Downer - New York Times Book Review


[R]eaders should be delighted. Schwartz has written a mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress's voice with all the nuance it demands.
Kunio Francis Tanabe - Washington Post


(Audio version.) Schwartz's novel of the young woman, not of royal heritage, chosen to marry Japan's crown prince after WWII, is a delicate portrait of a simultaneously blessed and circumscribed existence. The book is written in the first person, making a female reader the obvious choice, and Janet Song rises to the occasion. Song's voice-hushed, placid, deeply gentle-lends a minimalist beauty to Schwartz's novel. Song thankfully skips the accents and stylized voices, choosing to emphasize a careful, vigorous reading that conveys a (perhaps stereotypically Western) sense of Japanese calm. The result is a deeply soothing reading.
Publishers Weekly


Inspired by real stories of the Japanese imperial family, Schwartz's intimate and striking novel fictionalizes the life of Haruko, empress of Japan, who narrates a touching and complicated tale of breaking traditions and facing the reality of living as royalty. Raised in an upper-class family, Haruko attends private school and plays tennis at the nearby country club. In 1959, she is selected as the first nonaristocratic woman to marry into the Japanese monarchy, which she discovers to be an oppressive world of mysterious rules and regulations. The strains caused by constant breaches in protocol and betrayals by the royal family and the staff cause Haruko to suffer a nervous breakdown and lose her voice. But she soon recovers with a new view of her duties and responsibilities. Thirty years later, Haruko is now the empress, and she faces the duty of marrying her son to a young woman who is a rising star in the foreign ministry. While she persuades the modern commoner to accept her son's proposal, Haruko also tries to right the wrongs of her past, with tragic results. With a strong narrative voice and well-researched historical background, this is strongly recommended for all fiction collections.
Library Journal


Schwartz bases his finely wrought fourth novel on the life of Empress Michiko of Japan, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. Haruko Tsuneyasu grows up in postwar rural Japan and studies at Sacred Heart University, where she excels-particularly and fatefully-at tennis, which provides her entree to the crown prince, whom she handily beats in an exhibition match. After more meetings on and off the court, the prince asks Haruko to marry him. Persuaded by their mutual attraction and by assurances that the break with tradition will usher in a modern era, Haruko ultimately agrees, against her father's wishes, to become the first commoner turned royal. But, as her father had feared, her freedom and ambition suffer under the stifling rituals of court life. Eventually, Haruko succumbs to the inescapable judgment of the empress and her entourage, falling mute after the birth of her son, Yasuhito. Though the narrative loses some of its life after Haruko marries-perhaps mirroring Haruko's experience within the palace walls-urgency returns after Haruko chooses a wife for Yasuhito; the marriage tests Haruko's dedication to the crown. Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.
School Library Journal


Schwartz taps into the increasingly popular trend of blurring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction with this imagining of the lives of the current Empress and Crown Princess of Japan, both alive but seldom seen or heard from in public. Although the names of the Empress and Crown Princess have been changed, Schwartz holds close to the basic facts of their lives for most of his novel. Haruko is the beloved only child of a wealthy sake manufacturer, a serious student of art. She meets the Crown Prince while playing tennis, winning the doubles match against him and his heart almost simultaneously. Soon the Crown Prince, through his primary advisor/aide Dr. Watanabe, approaches the family with a marriage proposal. At first Haruko's parents resist, sending her away to Europe, but they soften under Watanabe's pressure while the Crown Prince woos Haruko in telephone conversations. Haruko, the first commoner to marry into the royal family, must relinquish her past, including her family, upon her marriage. The empress turns out to be the royal mother-in-law from hell and Haruko finds herself a prisoner of the royal protocol. Shortly after her son's birth, she has a nervous breakdown. Although she eventually recovers, she never truly enjoys her life as Crown Princess and then Empress. Years later, Haruko's son falls in love with another commoner, Harvard-educated Keiko, who has already begun a promising diplomatic career. Haruko empathizes with the young woman even as she manipulates her into marrying the prince. But when the strains of the Imperial Court endanger Keiko's mental health, Haruko helps her escape. The details of life for upper-class Japanese during and after World War II are fascinating, as are the rituals of the Imperial court, but readers may be put off by the way Schwartz creates thoughts and feelings for his thinly veiled characterizations of living people. Not likely to go over well with the Japanese royals.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Because Haruko is a commoner, not a peeress, the Crown Prince chooses to break with tradition in selecting her to be his bride. Why does Haruko’s father tell Dr. Watanabe that Haruko would be a “humiliation to Japan”? What is Dr. Watanabe’s response? How is this break with tradition later echoed in the marriage of Haruko’s own son?

2. Before her wedding, Haruko stares at her own face in a mirror that once belonged to her grandmother. When she light–heartedly asks her father if he will be happy when she is gone, he replies with great seriousness. Later, when Haruko returns to her parents’ home for a visit, Haruko’s father excuses himself from the table. Haruko finds him staring at the mirror she has left behind. Why does Haruko state, “We both understood that an evening like this was impossible and would never happen again”? What is the significance of the mirror Haruko chose not to include in her trousseau?

3. As Haruko prepares for her wedding, she observes, “At every turn, sometimes subtly and sometimes crudely, the same lesson was driven home: the world would greet me with abject deference not because I deserved it or wished it but because of my station, which in all things would stand above me, and indeed would outlast me.” What is Haruko’s attitude toward assuming her position in the royal family? Why do her parents ultimately urge her to accept her new life with courage?

4. How does Haruko experience the wedding ceremony inside the Kashikodokoro? How does she feel as she joins the Crown Prince in the shrine? Why does Haruko believe the crows on the roof of the shrine mock “the foolishness of men”?

5. What causes Haruko’s “breakdown”? Why is Yasu kept from her during this time? How does Haruko’s visit at her parents’ home affect her?

6. When Yasu first proposes marriage to the accomplished Keiko Mori, she refuses him. Haruko meets with Keiko and tells her that if Keiko marries Yasu, Haruko will do everything she can to protect her within the royal family. Haruko relates, “Riding home alone from our secret meeting late that afternoon, some gathering sense of responsibility for this young woman’s future happiness clung to me; and it felt not like triumph, but already, somehow, like remorse.” Describe Haruko’s inner conflict over Keiko’s decision. Feeling as she does about her own life, why do you suppose Haruko is willing to persuade Keiko to accept Yasu’s proposal?

7. How does Miko’s visit affect Haruko? Why does Miko confess that after seeing Haruko’s photograph in a magazine years ago, Miko had been a coward? Why does Haruko say, “Talking with you now is like remembering how to eat”?

8. As they watch their son’s wedding ceremony on television from their residence, how do Shige’s and Haruko’s reactions differ? How does Haruko feel about her husband’s indifference? Do you believe she truly loves him?

9. After the birth of her daughter, Keiko takes refuge in Karauizawa. When Yasu undertakes a trip to Europe without her, the royal family claims Keiko is suffering from an “adjustment disorder.” How does Keiko respond when Haruko visits her at Karauizawa and tells her, “You must take Reiko away from here and never come back.” Do you believe this is good advice? After convincing Keiko to marry Yasu in the first place, why is Haruko now suggesting Keiko flee? What does this tell you about Haruko’s state of mind?

10. In the closing pages, Haruko’s driver Okubo hands her an envelope marked with two cranes in flight. What does Haruko learn about where her daughter–in–law and granddaughter have gone? How does she feel about their disappearance? Describe the significance of this event for Haruko. To what degree does the book’s ending resolve Haruko’s own internal conflict?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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