Five Questions for "Gorilla, My Love"

1. Is Hazel right to be furious at her uncle (Hunca Bubba) for not keeping his promise?

2. Should Hazel, Big Brood, and Baby Jason get their money back? Where does the responsibility for this misunderstanding lie?

3. Is Hazel's depiction of Big Brood on the cross sacrilegious? What's her point?

4. What is the transformation of Hazel in this story? In other words, what does she become?

5. Is Hazel too smart for her own good? Or is she actually immature for her age? What is your sense of Hazel?

Five Questions for "Raymond's Run"

1. What is the relationship between Hazel and her brother? Does anything about the relationship strike you as strange?

2. What does Hazel mean when she says, "Gretchen smiles, but it's not a smile, and I'm thinking that girls never really smile at each other because they don't know how and don't want to know how"? (p. 26)

3. Why does Mr. Pearson want Hazel to throw the race?

4. There's a lot of smiling at the end of the story. What's going on?

5. What will happen to Hazel and Gretchen after this race?

Five Questions for "The Hammer Man"

1. This story almost reads like a comedy. Do you think this is meant to be a funny story? Why or why not?

2. How can you tell that the characters are poor in this story? Or at least different from you and me?

3. When Manny takes the ball from the cops and sails in for a layup, the little girl (our narrator) says, "And then he swooshed that ball in, even if there was no net, and you couldn't really hear the swoosh. Something happened to the bones in my chest. It was something" (p. 41). What does she mean?

4. Why didn't Manny just do what the police told him to do?

5. Why does the narrator participate in the fashion show at the end of the story?

Five Questions for "Mississippi Ham Rider"

1. Inez calls herself a "high-yaller Northern bitch" (48) in this story: what does she mean? As opposed to what could (or should) she be?

2. What kind of person is Inez? Is she a Southerner or a Northerner?

3. What are some differences between Inez and the four other narrators we have read about so far?

4. What did Inez mean when she said (top of p. 54): "One good exploitive act deserved another"?

5. Explain this line at the end of our story: "But he had already taken on a legendary air and was simply not of these times. I cursed Mr. Lyons' fairly-tale mentality and quietly indulged in fabricating figures from whole cloth" (56).

Five Questions for "The Lesson"

1. What lesson do you think is taught in this story? Who learns it?

2. This story takes place in the early 1960s when the civil rights movement was just getting underway. Do you think Miss Moore would have been active in this movement?

3. What does an education mean for each of these characters: Sylvia, Sugar, and Miss Moore?

4. Compare and contrast Sylvia and Sugar: how are they different? How are they alike?

5. Where do you see "pride" evident in this story? What about the idea of respect? Do either of these ideals matter to Sylvia? Why or why not?

Five Questions for "The Survivor"

1. This story is told using stream of consciousness. Can you follow the story when told like this, and why would Bambara choose this style? And what is our point of view here?

2. Jewel talks about "uncovering the layers of secrets stashed away in mothballs" (108). What secrets and why have they been stashed away for so long?

3. On page 110, Jewel wonders why she even came to Miss Candy in the first place, especially after Miss Candy asks why she stayed ten years with Paul. Why do you think she came?

4. How might setting (and its descriptions) play a part in our understanding of this story?

5. What might be similarities and/or differences in the women characters in this story?

Five Questions for "Maggie of the Green Bottles"

1. Why does Peaches say "Maggie was truly inspired. And she probably ruined my life from the get-go" (152)?

2. Is Maggie a good person or bad person? If you had a 10-year-old child, would let him or her play with Maggie?

3. Maggie is eccentric. Is she crazy? What evidence is there to suggest she is and what counter evidence could you give to show us she's not?

4. Why are the green bottle so important to Peaches? Why do they matter to Maggie?

5. Is this story more about Maggie or Peaches? When you choose, be sure to explain what transformation occurs to indicate why your character is the main character.

Five Questions for "The Johnson Girls"

1. The women in this story seem unlike other Bambara women. What (based on your own observations) do you think is different about this cast of characters?

2. On p.172, Sugar says: "A man, no matter how messy he is, can always get some good woman, two or three for that matter, to go for his shit. Right? But a woman? If her shit ain't together, she can forget it unless she very lucky and got a Great Ma Drew working roots." What does she mean and is this true?

3. On page 177, the narrator says, "Somebody has opened a wet umbrella in my chest." What does she mean? What happened?

4. Where is the family in this story? (Even in "The Survivor" there was Miss Candy.)

5. Note Bambara dedicated her whole collection "To the Johnson Girls": what might that mean for this last story?