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<p class="MsoNormal">Hello Friends,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The June book club meets at 7:00 PM on Wednesday June 2. The book is American Dirt and I am attaching and showing the questions below.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you are fully vaccinated, do you want to meet in person? We could meet at our home at 810 22<sup>nd</sup> ST S Arlington, VA 22202. We can order dinner as we used to do prior to the meeting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For those not fully vaccinated we will use Zoom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me know by email before Sunday evening if you want to meet in person. The address is
<a href="mailto:jwh100@outlook.com">jwh100@outlook.com</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">John<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">list end<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1. Throughout the novel, Lydia thinks back on how, when she was living a middle-class existence, she viewed migrants with pity: “All her life she’s pitied<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">those poor people. She’s donated money. She’s wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn’t<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">even want them” (chapter 10, page 94). Do you think the author chose to make Lydia a middle-class woman as her protagonist for a reason? Do you think the<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">reader would have had a different entry point to the novel if Lydia started out as a poor migrant? Would you have viewed Lydia differently if she had come<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">from poor origins? How much do you identify with Lydia?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2. Sebastián persists in running his story on Javier even though he knows it will put him and his family in grave danger. Do you admire what he did? Was<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">he a good journalist or a bad husband and father? Is it possible he was both? What would you have done if you were him?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">3. Lydia looks at Luca and thinks to herself: “Migrante. She can’t make the word fit him. But that’s what they are now. This is how it happens” (chapter<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">10, page 94). Lydia refers to her and Luca becoming migrants as something that happened to them rather than something they did. Do you think the author<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">intentionally made this sentence passive? Do you think language allows us to label things as “other” that is, in a way, tantamount to self-preservation?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Does it allow us to compartmentalize things that are too difficult to comprehend?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">4. When Lydia is at the Casa del Migrante, she learns the term cuerpomático --- “human ATM machine” --- and what it means. Were you surprised to learn<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">how dangerous the passage is, and for female migrants in particular?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">5. When Lydia, Luca, Soledad and Rebeca are at the Casa del Migrante, the priest warns them to turn back: “If it’s only a better life you seek, seek it<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">elsewhere.... This path is only for people who have no choice, no other option, only violence and misery behind you” (chapter 17, page 168). Were you surprised<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">that he would be issuing such a dire warning when he must know how desperate they are to be there in the first place? Under what conditions might you decide<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to leave your homeland?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">6. When they get to the US–Mexican border, Beto says, “This is the whole problem, right? Look at that American flag over there --- you see it? All bright<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and shiny; it looks brand-new. And then look at ours. It’s all busted up and raggedy” (chapter 26, page 273). Later he says, “I mean, those estadounidenses<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">are obsessed with their flag” (chapter 26, page 274). Do you agree with Beto? Do the flags symbolize something more than just the countries they represent?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">7. The term “American” only appears once in the novel. Did you notice? Why do you think the author made this choice?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">8. When Luca finally crosses over to the United States, he’s disappointed: “The road below is nothing like the roads Luca imagined he’d encounter in the<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">USA. He thought every road here would be broad as a boulevard, paved to perfection, and lined with fluorescent shopfronts. This road is like the crappiest<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Mexican road he’s ever seen. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt” (chapter 31, page 329). Discuss the significance of the title, AMERICAN DIRT. What do you think<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the author means by it?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">9. “Lydia had been aware of the migrant caravans coming from Guatemala and Honduras in the way comfortable people living stable lives are peripherally<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">aware of destitution. She heard their stories on the news radio while she cooked dinner in her kitchen. Mothers pushing strollers thousands of miles, small<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">children walking holes into the bottoms of their pink Crocs, hundreds of families banding together for safety, gathering numbers as they walked north for<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">weeks, hitching rides in the backs of trucks whenever they could, riding La Bestia whenever they could, sleeping in fútbol stadiums and churches, coming<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">all that way to el norte to plead for asylum. Lydia chopped onions and cilantro in her kitchen while she listened to their histories. They fled violence<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and poverty, gangs more powerful than their governments. She listened to their fear and determination, how resolved they were to reach Estados Unidos or<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">die on the road in that effort, because staying at home meant their odds of survival were even worse. On the radio, Lydia heard those walking mothers singing<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to their children, and she felt a pang of emotion for them. She tossed chopped vegetables into hot oil, and the pan sizzled in response. That pang Lydia<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">felt had many parts: it was anger at the injustice, it was worry, compassion, helplessness. But in truth, it was a small feeling, and when she realized<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">she was out of garlic, the pang was subsumed by domestic irritation. Dinner would be bland” (chapter 26, pages 276–77). Do you think the narrator intends<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">for the reader to wholeheartedly censure Lydia in this scene? Do you think Lydia is a stand-in for the reader and that the author is sending a broader<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">message? After reading the author’s note, do you think the author includes herself in this group?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">10. “I heard if your life is in danger wherever you come from, they’re not allowed to send you back there.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To Lydia it sounds like mythology, but she can’t help asking anyway, “You have to be Central American? To apply for asylum?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Beto shrugs. “Why? Your life in danger?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lydia sighs. “Isn’t everyone’s?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(chapter 26, page 277)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you were writing the rules for asylum eligibility, what would they be?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">11. Toward the end of the novel, Soledad “sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in el norte. She<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">spits through the fence. Only to leave a piece of herself there on American dirt” (chapter 28, page 301). Why do you think Soledad spits over the border?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is doing so a victory for her?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">12. “Luca wonders if they’re moving perpendicular to that boundary now, that place where the fence disappears and the only thing to delineate one country<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">from the next is a line that some random guy drew on a map years and years ago” (chapter 30, page 317). In his 1971 book THEORY OF JUSTICE, the philosopher<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">John Rawls came up with what he called the “veil of ignorance.” Rawls asked readers to think about how they would design an ideal society if they knew<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">nothing of their own sex, gender, race, nationality, individual tastes or personal identity. Do you think the decision-makers of the borders might’ve made<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a different decision if they’d donned the veil of ignorance? Do you think borders are a necessary evil or might their delineation serve a societal good?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you think that the world would be a better place if we all brought Rawls’s thought experiment to bear in our everyday individual and collective decision-making?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">13. Why do you think there are birds on the cover of the novel?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">14. “But the moment of the crossing has already passed, and she didn’t even realize it had happened. She never looked back, never committed any small act<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of ceremony to help launch her into the new life on the other side. Nothing can be undone. Adelante” (chapter 30, page 323). Do you think Lydia is better<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">or worse off for not having known about the moment of her boundary crossing? What importance do rituals have in marking milestones in our lives? Can the<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">done be undone, the past rewinded?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">15. Was Javier’s reaction to Marta’s death at all understandable? Humanizing? Do you believe that he didn’t want Lydia dead? Is what he did, in the name<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of his daughter, any less paternal than what Lydia does for Luca is maternal?<o:p></o:p></p>
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