Discussion Questions
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for All the Single Ladies...then take off on your own:
1. If you are a single woman, does this book resonate with you? If married, does it?
2. Why, according to Rebecca Traister, has the resistance to independent women been so intense? She compares the growth of single womanhood as powerful as the sexual revolution and abolition of slavery. Do you agree—in other words, does Traister make a convincing case?
3. How does Traister draw distinctions between privileged women (uwually white) and underprivileged women (usually women of color)? How, for instance does each subset of women view the role of work in their lives?
4. Do you agree with Traister's assessment that one of the "unacknowledged truths of female life is that women's primary, foundational, formative relations are as likely to be with each other as they are with men"? is that true for you or for other women you know? Is it true of men, as well?
4. Is marriage still the end goal for most women...or not? What does Traister think...and what do you think, on both a personal and cultural level?
5. Talk about one of the book's major premises—that the rise of the median age for a woman's first marriage, which has risen to 27, has had a momentous effect on the American cultural landscape.
6. Traister examines the lives of unmarried women throughout history who worked as abolitionists, fought for voting rights, who wrote for a living, or even ran countries. Which profiles do you find most interesting or most impressive?
7. How did literature once treat unmarried women (e.g., Wharton's Lily Bart or Dickens's Miss Havisham)? How are they treated in today's media (e.g., Sex and the City, Damages, or Scandal?)
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
All the Single Ladies (Traister) - Discussion Questions
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