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 You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know:
1. Borrowing a line from the movie, Men in Black...do you see anything "unusual" about the author's parents? What do you think of them—are they despicable, sad...or something else?
2. As a writer, Sellers draws on a rich vein of imagery to describe her mother and father—why might she have used that technique? Does her use of simile and metaphor paint a more, or less, vivid portrait than if she had used straight-forward prose?
3. As a child, how did Sellers justify her parents' strange behavior—how did she explain them to herself?
4. Later, Sellers tells us she has come to understand how her face-blindness enabled her to cope with her parents. What does she mean when she says, "I could sit and not-know the hell out of something, and it was a perfectly pleasant, nonchaotic way to spend time"?
5. Readers and reviewers alike have commented that, given both her face-blindness and upbringing, Sellers's memoir is remarkably free of anger. How do you explain the lack of bitterness? Compwhichare the tone of Sellers' memoir with other personal accounts you've read of painful childhoods.
6. Talk about Sellers' passage through the difficult years of adolescence—tough years to negotiate for any young person, let alone someone like Heather. What were her teenage struggles, and how do they compare to yours...or to anyone's typical teen years?
7. How does her then-fiance, Dave, enable Sellers to realize her family was not normal? What are the other ways in which Dave helps her?
8. Why does her marriage begin to fall apart? And why does it take so much time for Sellers to make the final break? What role does prosopagnosia play in the breakup...or does it play a role? Now that it's over, how does Sellers look back on her marriage?
9. Sellers is diagnosed with prosopagnosia in middle-age. Why has it taken so long to learn about her disorder? At first, Sellers feels tremendous relief. But a delayed reaction sets in, undermining her initial relief. Why the conflicting emotions?
10. People with Sellers' disorder have some delightful quirks: they love conferences—"festivals with labeled strangers." What else do prosopagnosiacs find enjoyable that the rest of us dislike?
11. Imagine that you have prosopagnosia. What would it be like? How well do you think you would cope? What would be most difficult? What techniques would you develop to make your world an easier place?
12. In what way has Sellers come to see prosopagnosia as a gift? How has it affected her writing...and her ability to comprehend people? Talk about her belief that the disorder fosters "the ability to live with uncertainty, to be receptive to all that a person might turn out to be, literally and metaphorically." What does she mean?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)