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 Slave: My True Story—
1. How does the controversy surrounding Nazer's accounts of her enslavement affect your view the book? (See the Washington Post review above.) Does her story, even if embellished or patently untrue, help focus attention on the practice of slavery in the Sudan and surrounding nations? Or does it weaken the cause for putting a halt to slavery?
2. Talk about the disparity of Nazer's idyllic childhood in a primative culture and the cruelty she experienced at the hands of her captors in the more affluent culture of Khartoum. In what way does her dehumanization call into question the idea of progress?
3. What are the ways in which Nazer coped with the inspeakable cruelty and beatings? To what degree did her personality or inner strength enable her to remain intact?
4. Also imagine what it would be like—how disorienting, bewildering, awe-inspiring—to be exposed for the first time, as Nazer was, to all the comforts and trappings of a modern society—plumbing, tv, phones, mirrors, even silverware.
5. Discuss Nazer's first-person-narrative voice in Slave. Do you find her open, almost childlike, candor appealing ... authentic ... or disingenuous? After all, the book was written by a man.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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