Sting-Ray Afternoons (Rushin) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Sting-Ray Afternoons ... then take off on your own:

1. Begin your discussion by talking about the Rushin family—Steve's parents and siblings. What kind of family life did his mother and father provide? Does it seem familiar to you? Do you find it different from the way parents approach raising a family today?

2. If you're about Steve Rushin's age, growing up in the same era—the 1970s—was your upbringing similar? Do you recognize or have affection for some of the same cultural icons, or even just simple everyday objects, that he seems to have? What else would you add?

3. Rushin also talks about childhood terrors, in things as simple as a Christmas special or a pop song. Did you have similar fears?

4. The author writes glowingly about the Midwest, which he says was comprised of "unfailingly decent and generous people," who were modest, lived with a sense of humility, and found it unseemly to toot their own horns. Is Rushin's a case of looking through rose-colored glasses or an clear-eyed assessment? Are those virtues similar to those where you grew up?
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5. Follow-up to Question 4: Rushin says the kindnesses "don't seem to recede at all with the passage of time but follow me, the way the moon always followed our car at night." What do you think? Have those traits he describes stayed the same in your life, where you live now or once lived?

6. What statements, or observations do you find particularly funny? How about Rushin's description of Sister Mariella in her "full-penguin habit" with the look of "a woman perpetually caught between elevator doors"? Are there other sections that strike you because of their nostalgia or their particular insights?

7. What about Rushin's inclusion of short histories of consumer products like the Weber Grill or his beloved Sting-Ray bike? Are they interesting?

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

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