Say Her Name (Goldman)

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 Say Her Name:

1. Goldman's book opens with the scene in which he and his wife stare through glass at exotic salamanders, the subject of Julio Cortazar's story "Axolotl." Two questions:

a) Why was Aura so desirous of seeing the salamanders?

b) Why might Goldman have begun his memoir with this scene? What symbolic significance does it have in this memoir?

2. Why does Goldman write this book? What is he attempting to understand—and what is he attempting to convey to readers? Does he succeed in either attempt?

3. Why does his mother-in-law blame Goldman? Is there any justification in her court case? Why does Goldman say, "If I were Juniata, I know I would have wanted to put me in prison, too. Though not for the reasons she and her brother gave." What are his reasons?

4. Goldman writes, "I always wished that I could know what it was like to be Aura." Do you think the power of writing—and the mystery of reading—has enabled the author to resurrect Aura? Has he brought her to life for you?

5. What kind of woman was Aura? Describe her qualities, including her eccentricities. Why, for instance, does she keep dresses in her closet that she won't wear?

6. How did Aura's upbringing—especially the pressures imposed on her by her mother—influence the type of woman she became?

7. In her diary, Aura recounts traveling to a beach her mother hever let her visit. Goldman writes that Aura “discovered a new way to be there." In what way was the beach transformative for Aura—how does it change her, or what insights does it open up for her? Have you ever experienced a similar transformation in a special place you found?

8. Talk about the love triangle between Aura, Juanita, and Francisco. Is it natural...or unnatural?

9. How does Goldman himself come across in this account? What does he mean when he calls himself a "man-boy"?

10. What attracts the two to one another? Is their attraction in spite of—or because of—their age difference?

11. Francisco Goldman refers to this work as a novel, yet it is a true account of his wife, her life, and death. So...what is this book: is it a novel or memoir? Can the author have it both ways?

12. If the living move beyond grief, is it a betrayal of the dead?

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

top of page (summary)