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 Spoken from the Heart:
1. Laura Welch learned that her grandmother had lost two children, but no one new the entire story—because it was never discussed. "You might talk about the wind and the weather, but troubles you swallowed deep down inside." In what way does this training—suppressing unpleasant information—prepare her for the life ahead?
2. How does Laura describe her growing up as an only child? What was it like for her eventually to marry into the large, boisterous Bush family? How hard do you think it was for the once shy girl who went on "solo picnics" to fit in?
3. How does Laura Bush frame the terrible car accident that happened when she was 17? She writes that so many lives were wrecked that night at that corner." Talk about the accident and its aftermath.
4. If you are "of an age," how well does Laura capture the tone and tenor of the 1950s and '60s? She grew up in Texas, but are there similarities to your childhood years?
5. Laura Bush doesn't talk about how she felt watching so many of her friends marry...and she, herself, not marrying until the day after her 31th birthday. She learned of a friend's remark that "the most eligible bachelor in Midland" married "the old maid of Midland." She says she thought it was funny. Do you believe her?
6. How does she explain the whirlwind courtship with her future husband? Does she discuss what drew her—a once shy, bookish young woman who read Tolstoy by the poolside—to an outgoing jock-turned-oil-man? How does she talk about their differences...and what holds their marriage together?
7. What does she mean that she and George, as a young married couple, "were the outliers on the Bush family curve"?
8. How does Laura talk about her relationship with her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush? How did the relationship evolve?
9. In what ways did Laura's life change from being first lady of Texas to being First Lady of the United States? Did you/do you ever envy her positions? Would you find it exciting...or terrifying...to be the wife of the President of the United States?
10. How does Laura defend the her husband's decision to declare war on Iraq? And his response to hurricane Katrina?
11. Talk about how she felt on her return to private life in Texas in 2009. What does she mean when she says, "I could at last exhale"?
12. Laura Bush has always been described as a deeply private individual. Do you feel she reveals her inner self in this memoir? Do you feel you know who she is, more so than when you started the book? Or do you feel she revealed very little, especially after her childhood?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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