Girl in Translation 
Jean Kwok, 2010
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487569


Summary
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about.

Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant—a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Hong Kong, China
• Raised—Brooklyn, New York City, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.F.A., Columbia   
  University
• Currently—lives in the Netherlands

Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl. Jean received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed an MFA in fiction at Columbia. She worked as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and now writes full-time. She has been published in Story magazine and Prairie Schooner. (From the publisher.)

More
Her own words:

Although Girl in Translation is a work of fiction and not a memoir, the world in which it takes place is real.

The youngest of seven children and a girl at that, I was a dreamy, impractical child who ran wild through the sunlit streets of Hong Kong. No one was more astonished than my family when I turned out to be quite good at school. We moved to New York City when I was five and my only gift was taken from me. I did not understand a word of English

We lost all our money in the move to the United States. My family started working in a sweatshop in Chinatown. My father took me there every day after school and we all emerged many hours later, soaked in sweat and covered in fabric dust. Our apartment swarmed with insects and rats. In the winter, we kept the oven door open day and night because there was no other heat in the apartment.

As I slowly learned English my talent for school re-emerged. When I was about to graduate from elementary school, I was tested by a number of exclusive private schools and won scholarships to all of them. However, I'd also been accepted by Hunter College High School, a public high school for the intellectually gifted, and that was where I wanted to go.

By then, my family had stopped working at the sweatshop and we'd moved to a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that had been divided into formerly rent-controlled apartments. It was a vast improvement, but there was still no money to spare. If I didn't get into a top school with a full financial aid package, I wouldn't be able to go to college. Although I loved English, I didn't think it was a practical choice and devoted myself to science instead. In my last year in high school, I worked in three laboratories: the Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology labs at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center and the Biophysics/Interface Lab at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Brooklyn.

I was accepted early to Harvard and I'd done enough college work to take Advanced Standing when I entered, thus skipping a year and starting as a sophomore in Physics. It was in college that I realized that I could follow my true calling, writing, and switched into English and American Literature.

I put myself through Harvard, working up to four jobs at a time to do so: washing dishes in the dining hall, cleaning rooms, reading to the blind, teaching English, and acting as the director of a summer program for Chinese immigrant children.  I graduated with honors, then took a job as a professional ballroom dancer in New York City: waltzing in high heels by day and writing by night. After a few years, I left ballroom dance and went to Columbia to do my MFA in fiction. Before I graduated from Columbia, two stories of mine had been published in Story. In my last year at Columbia, I worked fulltime for a major investment bank as a member of a five-person computer team that addressed the multimedia needs of the Board of Directors.

I then moved to Holland for love and went through the process of adjusting to another culture and learning another language again. Since then, my work has also been published in Prairie Schooner and the Nuyorasian Anthology, and I am a Featured Writer in the Holt high school textbook Elements Of Literature (eds. 2007, 2009, 2011), in which my story appears alongside those of authors such as Alice Walker, Pearl S. Buck, and Sandra Cisneros. I taught English at Leiden University in the Netherlands and worked as a Dutch-English translator until I finished Girl in Translation. After it was accepted for publication, I quit to write fulltime. I live in the Netherlands with my husband and two sons. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Jean Kwok takes two well-trod literary conceits - coming of age and coming to America - and renders them surprisingly fresh in her fast-moving, clean-prosed immigrants' tale, Girl in Translation. Along with her widowed mother, 11-year-old Kimberly (Ah-Kim) Chang is transported from the balmy familiarity of her native Hong Kong to the icy, inhospitable projects of 1980s Brooklyn—a girl with little grasp of the language and cultural mores of her newly adopted homeland, and even less financial means. How Kimberly fights through almost obscene marginalization to forge her own version of the American dream is consistently compelling, even if Girl's needlessly soapy conclusion seems unworthy of what came before.
Entertainment Weekly

A resolute yet naïve Chinese girl confronts poverty and culture shock with equal zeal when she and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn in Kwok's affecting coming-of-age debut. Ah-Kim Chang, or Kimberly as she is known in the U.S., had been a promising student in Hong Kong when her father died. Now she and her mother are indebted to Kimberly's Aunt Paula, who funded their trip from Hong Kong, so they dutifully work for her in a Chinatown clothing factory where they earn barely enough to keep them alive. Despite this, and living in a condemned apartment that is without heat and full of roaches, Kimberly excels at school, perfects her English, and is eventually admitted to an elite, private high school. An obvious outsider, without money for new clothes or undergarments, she deals with added social pressures, only to be comforted by an understanding best friend, Annette, who lends her makeup and hands out American advice. A love interest at the factory leads to a surprising plot line, but it is the portrayal of Kimberly's relationship with her mother that makes this more than just another immigrant story.
Publishers Weekly

Living in squalor among rats and roaches in a virtually abandoned unheated apartment building in Brooklyn, NY, 11-year-old Kimberly Chang narrates how, after recently immigrating from Hong Kong, she and her mother strive to eke out a life together working in an illegally run sweat shop. Though she was once the top-ranked pupil in her class in Hong Kong, Kimberly's English skills are so limited that she must struggle to keep up in school while still translating for her mother and attempting to hide the truth of her living situation from her well-to-do classmates and only true friend, Annette. Drawing on her own experiences as an immigrant from Hong Kong (though she herself went to Harvard and Columbia, while Kimberly earns a spot at Yale), Kwok adeptly captures the hardships of the immigrant experience and the strength of the human spirit to survive and even excel despite the odds. Verdict: Reminiscent of An Na's award-winning work for younger readers, A Step from Heaven, this work will appeal to both adults and teens and is appropriate for larger public libraries, especially those serving large Asian American populations. —Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. Lib., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal

An iteration of a quintessential American myth—immigrants come to America and experience economic exploitation and the seamy side of urban life, but education and pluck ultimately lead to success. Twelve-year-old Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong and feel lucky to get out before the transfer to the Chinese. Because Mrs. Chang's older sister owns a garment factory in Brooklyn, she offers Kimberly's mother—and even Kimberly—a "good job" bagging skirts as well as a place to live in a nearby apartment. Of course, both of these "gifts" turn out to be exploitative, for to make ends meet Mrs. Chang winds up working 12-hour-plus days in the factory. Kimberly joins her after school hours in this hot and exhausting labor, and the apartment is teeming with roaches. In addition, the start to Kimberly's sixth-grade year is far from prepossessing, for she's shy and speaks almost no English, but she turns out to be a whiz at math and science. The following year she earns a scholarship to a prestigious private school. Her academic gifts are so far beyond those of her fellow students that eventually she's given a special oral exam to make sure she's not cheating. (She's not.) Playing out against the background of Kimberly's fairly predictable school success (she winds up going to Yale on full scholarship and then to Harvard medical school) are the stages of her development, which include interactions with Matt, her hunky Chinese-American boyfriend, who works at the factory, drops out of school and wants to provide for her; Curt, her hunky Anglo boyfriend, who's dumb but sweet; and Annette, her loyal friend from the time they're in sixth grade. Throughout the stress of adolescence, Kimberly must also negotiate the tension between her mother's embarrassing old-world ways and the allurement of American culture. A straightforward and pleasant, if somewhat predictable narrative, marred in part by an ending that too blatantly tugs at the heartstrings.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Throughout Girl in Translation, the author uses creative spelling to show Kimberly’s mis-hearing and misunderstanding of English words. How does the language of the novel evolve as Kimberly grows and matures? Do you see a change in the respective roles that English and Chinese play in the narrative as it progresses?

2. The word "translation" figures prominently in the title of the novel, and learning to translate between her two languages is key to Kimberly’s ability to thrive in her new life. Does she find herself translating back and forth in anything other than language? Clothing? Priorities? Expectations? Personality or behavior? Can you cite instances where this occurs, and why they are significant to the story as a whole?

3. Kimberly has two love interests in the book. How are the relationships that Matt and Curt offer different? Why do you think she ultimately chooses one boy over the other? What does that choice say about her? Can you see a future for her with the other boy? What would change?

4. In many ways Kimberly takes over the position of head of household after her family moves to New York. Was this change in roles inevitable? How do you imagine Ma feels about it? Embarrassed? Grateful? In which ways does Ma still fulfill the role of mother?

5. Kimberly often refers to her father, and imagines how her life might have been different, easier, if he had lived. Do you think she is right?

6. Kimberly’s friend Annette never seems to grasp the depths of Kimberly’s poverty. What does this say about her? What lesson does this experience teach Kimberly? Is Kimberly right to keep the details of her home life a secret?

7. Kimberly believes that devoting herself to school will allow her to free her family from poverty. Does school always live up to her expectations? Where do you think it fails her? How does it help her succeed? Can you imagine the same character without the academic talent? How would her life be different? What would remain the same? Is Kimberly right to believe that all of her potential lies in her talent for school? Must qualities like ambition, drive, hope, and optimism go hand in hand with book smarts?

8. Think about other immigrant stories. How is Kimberly’s story universal? How is it unique? How does Kimberly’s Chinese-American story compare to other immigrant stories? Would it change if she were from a different country or culture?

9. Kimberly lives in extreme poverty. Was anything about her circumstances surprising to you? How has reading Girl in Translation affected your views of immigration? How can you apply these lessons in your community?

10. The story is set in the 1980s. Do you think immigrant experiences are much different today? What has changed? What has remained the same?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Sister Scarlet Mary
Julia Peterkin, 1928
University of Georgia Press
376 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780820323770

Summary
Winner, 1929 Pulitizer Prize

Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness.

In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 31, 1880
• Where—Laurens County, South Carolina, USA
• Death—August 1961
• Where—near Fort Motte, South Carolina
• Education—Converse College (South Carolina)
• Awards—Pulitizer, 1929

Julia Peterkin was a white American fiction writer, who wrote about the African-American experience in the American South.

Her father was a physician, of whom she was the youngest of four children. Her mother died soon after her birth. In 1896, at age 16, Julia graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from which she received a master's degree a year later. She taught at the Forte Motte, South Carolina, school for a few years before she married William George Peterkin in 1903. He was a planter who owned Lang Syne, a 2,000-acre (8.1 km2) cotton plantation near Fort Motte.

Julia began writing short stories, inspired by the everyday life and management of the plantation.

She was audacious as well as gracious, an ambiguity attested to by Elizabeth Robeson in her 1995 scholarly essay about Peterkin in the Journal of Southern History. Peterkin sent highly assertive letters to people she did not know and had never met, such as Carl Sandburg and H.L. Mencken, and included samples of her writing about the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina.

Essentially sequestered on the plantation, she invited Sandburg, Mencken and other prominent people to the plantation. Sandburg, who lived nearby in Flat Rock, North Carolina, made a visit. While Mencken did not visit, he nevertheless became Peterkin's literary agent in her early career, a possible testament to her persuasive letters. Eventually, Mencken led her to Alfred Knopf, who published her first book, Green Thursday, in 1924.

In addition to a number of subsequent novels, her short stories were published in magazines and newspaper throughout her career. She was one of very few white authors to specialize in the Negro experience and character. But her work was not always praised, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Scarlet Sister Mary was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, a South Carolina town. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book.

In addition to the controversy over the obscenity claim, there was another problem with Scarlet Sister Mary. Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by Dr. John B. Oliver. His nomination was superseded by the School of Journalism's choice of Peterkin's book. Evidently in protest, Burton resigned from the jury.

As an actress and possible dilettante, she played the main character to some acclaim in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Town Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina, from February 1932.

In 1998, the Department of English and Creative Writing at her alma mater, Converse College, established The Julia Peterkin Award for poetry, open to everyone. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Peterkin is a southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth.
W. E. B. Du Bois


[N]early everything that Mrs. Peterkin's characters did and said was interesting. She has a great talent for creative observation and description, for realistic folklore.
Time Magazine (6/10/1929)


Pulitzer Prize winner Peterkin was a pioneer in writing candidly, yet unsentimentally, about black women, including their sensuality.
Library Journal

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 Scarlet Sister Mary:

1. How do you see Mary Pinesett? Do you admire her...do you like her? Or does she irritate and anger you? Is she an early feminist, defining her own sexuality and identity while defying the social order? Is she a "primitivist" who uses sexuality and child-bearing to connect with the natural cycle of life? Is she a victim of spousal abuse, struggling to regain self-esteem? Is she an immoral, immature, self-centered woman? All...some... none of the above...or something else?

2. As a white writer, does Julia Peterkin play into racial stereotypes for African-Americans? Or, as W.E.B. Dubois said of her, does she have "the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth" whether black or white?

3. Talk about the rat and the wedding cake as symbolizing the future prospects of Sister Mary and July's marriage.

4. What role does magic and superstition play in the Gullah community and in Sister Mary's life?

5. Do you care about this book's characters? Does Peterkin fully develop them—providing them with emotional and psychological complexity? Or do you find them flat and one-dimensional?

6. In what way might Killdee Pinesett be considered, in the words of one critic/reviewer, "one of the most moving, one of the most admirable characters is modern fiction"?

7. What kind of family does Mary create...what affect does her promiscuity have on her children? Is she a good mother?

8. How does the church view Sister Mary? And how do you view the church with its concepts of sin and grace? What about Brer Dee lining out the hymns?

9. At the end, when the church has accepted her back into its fold, does Sister Mary repent? Why does she keep the charm when Daddy Cudjoe asks her to return it? What does she mean when she tells Daddy Cudjoe, "E's all I got now to keep me young"?

10. Is this book a morality tale?

11. Are you at all familiar with the Gullah culture along the Carolina coasts, its unusual patois, the beautiful sweet grass baskets? You might do a little research into the area and its history. There's a Gullah cultural and educational center not far from Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina—take a look at its website.

12. Overall, what do you think of this book? Is it a good read...a disappointing one? Did it hold your interest?

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

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict 
Laurie Viera Rigler, 2007
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452289727


Summary
After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and finds herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?

Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman’s life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. But not even her love of Jane Austen has prepared Courtney for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condomless seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, who fills Courtney’s borrowed brain with confusing memories that are clearly not her own.

Try as she might to control her mind and find a way home, Courtney cannot deny that she is becoming this other woman—and being this other woman is not without its advantages: especially in a looking-glass Austen world. And especially with a suitor who may not turn out to be a familiar species of philanderer after all. (From the publisher.) 

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1957
• Where—N/A
• Education—State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California

When not indulging herself in re-readings of Jane Austen’s six novels, Laurie Viera Rigler is a freelance book editor who teaches writing workshops, including classes in storytelling technique at Vroman’s, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore.

After many years of keeping her Austen addiction largely to herself, Laurie decided to come out of the Janeite closet when the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) decided to hold their annual general meeting in Los Angeles. Who knew there were other obsessed souls out there, a whole community of them, as a matter of fact? Now she has people she can talk to about what’s most important in life, Jane Austen, Jane Austen, and Jane Austen. When she’s not talking about Austen, reading about Austen, or writing books inspired by Austen, she’s tinkering with the website of JASNA’s Southwest Region, where she serves as webmaster.

Prior to writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie teamed with Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper to write a humorous, gender-specific guide to movie rentals entitled He Rents, She Rents: The Ultimate Film Guide to the Best Women’s Films and Guy Movies. She also coauthored Popping the Question: Real-Life Stories of Marriage Proposals, From the Romantic to the Bizarre with Sheree Bykofsky.

Before she began writing and editing books, Laurie spent several years on and around film sets in various capacities, from production coordinating features to producing short films; and from reading screenplays to rewriting and cowriting scripts. Then one day, she saw in her mind a twenty-first-century L.A. Janeite waking up in the body and life of a woman in Austen’s time. She knew this one had to be a book, and she started writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. She still loves film, but finds watching it much more fun than making it. Especially if it stars Colin Firth or Matthew MacFadyen.

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” Oh, yeah. Education. Laurie graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in Classics. That good enough for you, Mr. Darcy? (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
A devotee of all things Austen… discovers the reality of life in Regency England: rampant body odor, sexual and class repression and a style of medical care involving bloodletting.... Despite the smells, little in [her] current lifestyle—including most of the men—can compete with the erotic charge of dancing in a candlelit ballroom.
USA Today


A delightful comic romp… Jane Austen makes a cameo appearance that is pure pleasure.
Times Picayune


(Audio version.) Orlagh Cassidy is delightfully fun as Courtney Stone, a modern Los Angeles girl nursing a heartbreak who wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body and life of a Jane Austenesque Regency girl. Cassidy is spot-on with Courtney's California accent, modern-day moaning about men, self-analysis and doubt, and sarcasm—and then, without missing a beat, flips easily into the proper, upper-class English tones of Jane (the Regency girl Courtney has replaced, whose accent came with the body), her pompous, controlling mother, her desperate suitor and her sympathetic best friend. Orlagh's lively narration makes Courtney even more endearing and brings the colorful story to life. Fans of Austen, chick lit, and romantic comedies should definitely put this one on their listening list.
Publishers Weekly


Waking up in early 19th-century Britain is not a common occurrence for a 21st-century gal from L.A. Yet Courtney Stone, just having dumped her womanizing fiancé, does wake up during the Regency era in the home and body of Jane Mansfield (yes, she acknowledges the irony), a woman of 30 who has just fallen from a horse. As Courtney realizes that she is not dreaming, she becomes attuned to the thoughts, feelings, and memories of her host. First novelist Rigler has taken her own love of author Austen and superimposed it onto Courtney, a repeat reader and viewer of all things Jane. Aside from the obvious, there are other complications afoot, including a possible dalliance with a footman and the confused emotions regarding Charles Edgeworth, a prospective suitor and the brother of Jane's dearest friend, Mary. Throw in Jane's stern mother, her back-stabbing cousin, and a fortune-teller, and it's one wild time-traveling ride. Or is it? At book's end, it isn't quite clear where (or who) Courtney/Jane is. The voice of our heroine isn't well established either. She quotes from her favorite author's novels at will, but her tone and behavior are more that of a recalcitrant Valley Girl. What began as a charming premise becomes downright irritating. Perhaps exhaustive Austen collections would be interested.
Library Journal


Talk about an out-of-body experience. One moment Courtney Stone is a modern-day L.A. career woman lamenting a lost love; the next she is Jane Mansfield, a well-to-do, willowy (though not particularly buxom, unlike her twentieth-century namesake) lady in nineteenth-century England....This frothy take on literary time travel will appeal most to readers well versed in the celebrated author's memorable characters and themes.—Allison Block.
Booklist


An Austen addict who's been having romantic trouble in contemporary Los Angeles finds herself transported to early-19th-century England living a life that seems lifted from a compilation of the Austen novels. One morning shortly after Courtney has broken with her fiance Frank-he's been carrying on with the wedding-cake decorator-she mysteriously wakes up inside the body of Miss Jane Mansfield in 1813. Thirty-year-old Jane is recovering from an equine accident and resisting her unpleasant mother's attempts to push her into marriage. At first Courtney thinks her time travel is a dream, but when she begins talking defiantly, Mrs. Mansfield threatens to put Jane into an asylum. Courtney/Jane slides into the life of an Austen heroine, resisting the charms of handsome Mr. Edgeworth, who reminds her too much of not only Frank but his best friend Wes, to whom Courtney has been feeling drawn despite herself. She confides her confusing identity to Edgeworth's sister Mary, Jane's true friend who has dissuaded her from marrying Edgeworth because she thinks he fathered a housemaid's illegitimate child. Mary also resents that he broke off her romance with a man he found unsuitable. Mary and Jane/Courtney travel the Austen map, first to Bath, then to London, along the way encountering men and women who will be familiar to the most casual Austen reader. First-time novelist Rigler jumbles names and pieces of plot line from the novels into an Austenian dream (or nightmare). Mary and Jane/Courtney learn that Mary's former beloved was a cad and that Edgeworth acted nobly with the maid, not sexually. How Courtney entered Jane's body, through the ministrations of a magical fortuneteller, is almost an afterthought. Jane/Courtney's 21st-century urges offer provocative possibilities, but Courtney's world is a pale sketch, and Jane's so laden with Austen references that it has no life. Even the most diehard Austen fans may find this work to be too much.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Would you have handled things differently if you found yourself in Courtney’s/Jane’s situation? Which things would you have done differently? Which things would you have done the same?

Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again.— Frank Churchill, in Jane Austen’s Emma

2. How does Courtney/Jane use Jane Austen’s novels as a means of making sense of her world? Have you ever turned to your favorite books or films for inner strength, guidance, or comfort?

Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is . . . in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.— Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

3. How do you interpret the ending of the book?

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.— From Mansfield Park

4. Aside from the societal restrictions on a woman’s mobility, career choices, and living arrangements that Courtney/Jane faced in 1813, have parental, peer, and personal attitudes toward unmarried women fundamentally changed since Jane Austen’s day?

Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.— Lydia Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

5. One of the ways in which Courtney/Jane defines herself is by what she reads. To what extent do we define ourselves by what we read? To what extent do we form our opinions of others based on what they read?

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. — Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

6. Like Courtney/Jane, have you ever found yourself in a situation where your very concept of who you are was fundamentally challenged?

Till this moment, I never knew myself.— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

7. What are the things you think you would enjoy the most about being in Jane Austen’s world? What are the things you might find particularly challenging? Is there anything in the contemporary world that you absolutely could not do without?

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.— Emma Woodhouse, in Jane Austen’s Emma

8. If it were possible for you to be someone in Jane Austen’s world, who would you wish to be? Would you prefer a round-trip ticket to that world, or one-way only?

The distance is nothing, when one has a motive...— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Nefertiti
Michelle Moran, 2007
Three Rivers (Random House)
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307381743

Summary
Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised in a powerful family that has provided wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries.

Ambitious, charismatic, and beautiful, Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep, an unstable young pharaoh. It is hoped that her strong personality will temper the young ruler’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods.

From the moment of her arrival in Thebes, Nefertiti is beloved by the people but fails to see that powerful priests are plotting against her husband’s rule. The only person brave enough to warn the queen is her younger sister, yet remaining loyal to Nefertiti will force Mutnodjmet into a dangerous political game; one that could cost her everything she holds dear. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1980
• Where—San Fernando Valley of California, USA
• Education—B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Claremont Graduate University
• Currently—lives in southern California

Michelle Moran, an American novelist, was born in California's San Fernando Valley. She took an interest in writing from an early age, purchasing Writer's Market and submitting her stories and novellas to publishers from the time she was twelve. She majored in literature at Pomona College. Following a summer in Israel where she worked as a volunteer archaeologist, she earned an MA from the Claremont Graduate University.

Her experiences at archaeological sites were what inspired her to write historical fiction. A public high school teacher for six years, Moran is currently a full-time writer living in California

Novels
Moran's novels have been published in both the UK and the US, and have been translated and sold in more than 20 countries, including France, Bulgaria, Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Poland, Russia, China, and Taiwan.

2016 - Mata Hari's Last Dance
2015 - Rebel Queen
2012 - The Second Empress
2011 - Madame Tussaud
2009 - Cleopatra's Daughter
2008 - The Heretic Queen
2007 - Nefertiti
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/18/2016.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Michelle's on History Buff.

Book Reviews
Almost every character in the book is based on a historical figure, and Moran fleshes out their personalities beautifully, highlighting the teenage pharaoh's arrogance and paranoia, underscoring his queen's ambition and insecurity...Inspired by the distinctive bust of Nefertiti at the Altes Museum, in Berlin, Moran has created an engrossing tribute to one of the most powerful and alluring women in history.
Boston Globe

Nefertiti is a gem of a novel—the atmosphere positively seethes with intrigue, passion, betrayal and, above all, the searing and oppressive heat of sibling rivalry. Posh and Becks have nothing on the shenanigans of this ancient pair of celebrities!
Daily Telegraph (Britain)

Before there was Cleopatra there was the notorious Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile. Moran recreates her story with a vibrancy, drama and compassion that would make the queen proud. As in The Other Boleyn Girl, the relationship between sisters sets this novel apart and makes Nefertiti's story powerful and memorable. It belongs alongside the finest fictional biographies.
Romantic Times Book Review

This fictionalized life of the notorious queen is told from the point of view of her younger sister.... Though sometimes big events are telegraphed, Moran...gets the details just right, and there are still plenty of surprises in an epic that brings an ancient world to life.
Publishers Weekly

Mutnodjmet as narrator is a stroke of genius.... Beautifully written and completely engrossing, this first novel should enjoy wide readership.
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
1. Thousands of years after the Pharaoh's ruled Egypt; this ancient civilization continues to fascinate the world. Were you drawn to Nefertiti by an interest in Egyptology? What aspects of Egyptian life are of interest to you?

2. History remembers Nefertiti as a great beauty. What other aspects of her personality are highlighted in Nefertiti? How does she use her stunning good looks to her advantage? How do they hurt her? Have you ever known a woman like Nefertiti? Overall, is this a positive portrayal of her as a Queen? As a sister?

3. Is Mutnodjmet jealous of her sister? Is Nefertiti jealous of Mutny? How are the sisters different? What makes two people who are raised together turn out so differently? What do they have in common?

4. Nefertiti knows she must convince Amunhotep that she is more than his mother's choice of bride. How does she do it? How does Kiya attempt to keep him? How do their powerful fathers make the rivalry between these two women worse?

5. How are Nefertiti and Kiya alike? What is the nature of the Pharaoh's relationship with each? If you put his ambitions aside, which of them do you think Amunhotep loved more? Why does Nefertiti try so hard to outshine Kiya at every turn? Are her reasons personal or political?

6. What is your impression of Amunhotep? Do you think he was responsible for the death of his older brother? His father? Is he a tragic figure in Nefertiti or a villain?

7. General Nakhtmin is taken by Mutnodjmet from their first meeting while she pretends to be uninterested in him. Why? What is the attraction between them? Why does Mutny deny it? What finally convinces her to admit her love for him?

8. Do you think Nefertiti's father, Vizier Ay, was a wise man or was he a slave to his ambitions just as his daughter was? Do you think he asks for an unfair level of loyalty from Mutnodjmet? Does she disappoint him?

9. When the Elder dies Amunhotep becomes Pharaoh of both Upper and Lower Egypt, meaning he is free to do as he wishes. Nefertiti is entitled to the dowager queen's crown but doesn't take it. What does she do instead? Why doesn't Nefertiti demand this symbol of all she has worked to attain?

10. Why do Nefertiti and Amunhotep oppose Mutnodjmet's marriage to the general? When Mutny lost her baby, did you think Nefertiti was to blame? How would a child of Nakhtmim and Mutnodjmet be a threat to Pharaoh?

11. What effect does the intrigue and politics and positioning of court life have on Nefertiti and Mutnodjmet's relationship? What makes the sister's close? Would you say they are bound by love or obligation? Why does Nefertiti want to keep Mutny so close?

12. Unwilling to call on the army, Amunhotep makes a treaty with the Hittites. What is the result of this treaty? Why is Amunhotep so afraid of the army?

13. Desperate for a son, Nefertiti asks Mutnodjmet to take her to visit a shrine to Tawaret, the hippo goddess of birth. What does the fact that Neferetiti calls on the old gods in times of trouble say about her belief in Aten? Why does she ask her sister to pray for her? Considering how powerful the Egyptians considered their gods, do you think Nefertiti had any concerns about denying the gods to advance herself and her family?

14. Why does Nefertiti banish Mutnodjmet?

15. What does Mutnodjmet learn about herself when Ipu marries and takes a long journey away? How does this help her resolve any anger towards Nefertiti?

16. Nefertiti tells Pharaoh that she dreamed the scheming Panahesi would be High Priest of Aten to get him out of her own father's way. On page 386, Panahesi tries to use the same ruse to assure his grandson the throne. Is it a success?

17. How does declaring Nefertiti co-regent change Amunhotep's position? What does this mean for Nefertiti? For her daughters and family? Is this the ultimate victory it appears to be?

18. When the plague comes to Amarna (page 404) Mutnodjmet decides to stay instead of leaving for the safety of Thebes. Why? What would you have done in her position?

19. What happens to Amunhotep? Do you think he deserved this fate? Does Nefertiti deserve what happens to her?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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