Ru - Reading Group Guide

In Brief

These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation about Ru, an autobiographical novel based on the author’s real-life experience as a Vietnamese émigré and how she found both her way—and her voice—after immigrating to Quebec.

Details

For discussion

1.  The novel’s title, Ru, has different meanings in both the author’s native and adoptive languages: in Vietnamese, ru is a lullaby; in French, a stream. How do these two different meanings play out during the course of the book?
2. Thúy has chosen to tell her story in short vignettes, often linked by subject rather than chronology. What do you think her reasoning might be for choosing this form over a more traditional narrative arc?
3. The narrator reveals in the first pages of Ru that her name is a variation of her mother’s, that she was supposed to be her mother’s extension and sequel, but that this role ended when she was ten years old (2). Why and how does her relationship to her mother change?
4. The narrator describes herself in childhood as being her cousin Sao Mai’s “shadow” (18). What does she mean? What are some of the other times in her life when she feels like a shadow?
5. About the Communist child inspectors living in her family’s home, the narrator writes: “We no longer knew if they were enemies or victims, if we loved or hated them, if we feared or pitied them. And they no longer knew if they had freed us from the Americans, or, on the contrary, if we had freed them from the jungle of Vietnam” (32). How does the narrator’s up-is-down-and-down-is-up war experience continue to color her views toward her homeland and its people throughout the course of her life?
6. Constant movement is one of Ru’s themes. At one point, the narrator writes, “I never leave a place with more than one suitcase . . . Nothing else can become truly mine” (100). Why do you think she believes this? Do you think it is true for her?
7. In, Vietnamese, the narrator tells us, there are different words for different ways of loving (96). But the narrator says it is her children who define for her what it means simply “to love” (102).  How do you think her love for her children is different from what she feels for her parents, relatives, or lovers?
8. The narrator describes an incident at restaurant school in Hanoi when a waiter reminded her that she “no longer had the right to declare that [she] was Vietnamese because [she] no longer had their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears” (78). The narrator seems to believe he was right; do you?
9. Music appears throughout the book in various forms and situations: the music the narrator’s father plays on the piano to corrupt the child inspectors; the Fame theme song Johanne teaches her to sing; the music her middle-aged mother dances to in her weekly dance classes; the melodies the strolling merchants sing while advertising their basket wares. What is music’s importance in Ru?
10. The American Dream plays an integral role in the narrator’s life and her search for meaning, and she references it often during the novel. What is her version of the American Dream? Do you think she attains it?
11. The narrator speaks of the Vietnamese women permanently hunched by the weight of their grief (39). To what extent do you think she identifies with those women ?
12. Many aspects of this novel are clearly autobiographical, but the author classifies it as fiction. Why do you think Thúy chose to write the book she did, rather than a straight memoir?

Suggested reading 
Rhea Tregebov, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell; Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation; Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Anthony Shadid, House of Stone; William Saroyan, My Name Is Aram; Robert Trando, Letters of a Vietnamese Émigré; John Bul Dau, God Grew Tired of Us; Lac Su, I Love You’s Are for White People; Sopheap Ly, M.D., No Dream Beyond My Reach; Chanrithy Him, When Broken Glass Floats; Juliet Lac, Blossoms on the Wind; Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace; Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves of Heaven

SOURCE: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ru-9781608198986/

Reviews on Ru, by Kim Thuy

National Post: HERE

Globe & Mail: HERE

The Independent (UK): HERE

Little Bee: do you like these questions better?

From Shmoop:

Little Bee (The Other Hand) Questions

1. Would you machete-chop off one of your fingers if you were in Sarah or Andrew's place? Why or why not?
2. Do you know anyone who has experienced anything like Little Bee's flight to a new place? If so, how does that experience compare with Little Bee's? If not, has reading Little Bee changed your perspective in any way?
3. What political arguments does the novel make?
4. Which character's political opinions are most or least like your own?
5. Why does Little Bee wish she was money?
6. Have you ever experienced detention (yes, school detention counts)? If so, did the experience change you, or not? How does detention change Little Bee?
7. Why does Little Bee want to prove to the readers "that the color of [her] life is gray" (1.36)? Does she manage to prove it?
8. Do you think Little Bee will ever stop imagining ways to kill herself?
9. Is Little Bee a reliable narrator? Is Sarah? What would the story look like if Charlie were the one narrating?
10. Why do readers react so strongly to Sarah? Why don't some readers like her very much? How do you feel about her?
11. Is this novel destined to be a classic, or not? Why?
12. What do you think happens to the characters at the end of the novel? Do you like that the ending is open, or wish the loose ends were more neatly tied up?

Little Bee: discussion questions

Questions for Discussion

1. “Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive” (p. 9). For Little Bee and other asylum seekers, the story of their life thus far is often all they have. What happens to the characters that carry their stories with them, both physically and mentally? What happens when we try to forget our past? How much control over their own stories do the characters in the book seem to have?

2. Little Bee tells the reader, “We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived” (p. 9). Which characters in the story are left with physical scars? Emotional scars? Do they embrace them as beautiful? Do you have any scars you’ve come to embrace? Did you feel more connected to Little Bee as a narrator after this pact?

3. Little Bee strives to learn the Queen’s English in order to survive in the detention center. How does her grasp of the language compare with Charlie’s? How does the way each of these two characters handle the English language help to characterize them?

4. How did it affect your reading experience to have two narrators? Did you trust one woman more than the other? Did you prefer the voice of one above the other?

5. Little Bee credits a small bottle of nail polish for “saving her life” while she was in the detention center (p. 7). Is there any object or act that helps you feel alive and beautiful, even when everything else seems to be falling apart?

6. Of the English language Little Bee says, “Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air” (p. 12). What do you think she means by this? Can you think of any examples of English words that defend themselves? Why is language so important to Little Bee?

7. Little Bee says of horror films, “Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it” (p. 45). Do you agree? Was reading this novel in any way a dose of horror for you? How did it help you reflect on the presence or lack of horror in your own life?

8. Little Bee figures out the best way to kill herself in any given situation, just in case “the men come suddenly.” How do these plans help Little Bee reclaim some power? Were you disturbed by this, or were you able to find the humor in some of the scenarios she imagines?

9. What does Udo changing her name to Little Bee symbolize for you? How does her new name offer her protection? Do you think the name suits her?

10. “To have an affair, I began to realize, was a relatively minor transgression. But to really escape from Andrew, to really become myself, I had to go the whole way and fall in love” (p. 161-162). Do you agree with Sarah that an affair is a minor transgression? How did falling in love with someone else help Sarah become herself? What role did Andrew play in perpetuating Sarah’s extramarital affair?

11. When Little Bee finds that Andrew has hanged himself she thinks, “Of course I must save him, whatever it costs me, because he is a human being.” And then she thinks, “Of course I must save myself, because I am a human being too” (p. 194). How do the characters in the story decide when to put themselves first and when to offer charity? Is one human life ever more valuable than another? What if one of the lives in question is your own?

From the author's website . . .

Q & A from the author. I think this is really worth reading. Click HERE

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October book: Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

 

Ready to talk about Little Bee? 

First, one of my favourite websites about books, Shmoop, has lots and lots to say HERE 

A few reviews: 

New York Times: "While the pretext of “Little Bee” initially seems contrived — two strangers, a British woman and a Nigerian girl, meet on a lonely African beach and become inextricably bound through the horror imprinted on their encounter — its impact is hardly shallow. Rather than focusing on postcolonial guilt or African angst, Cleave uses his emotionally charged narrative to challenge his readers’ conceptions of civility, of ethical choice." Click HERE for the full review.

The Guardian: "The Other Hand is an ambitious and fearless gallop from the jungles of Africa via a shocking encounter on a Nigerian beach to the media offices of London and domesticity in leafy suburbia. Part-thriller, part-multicultural Aga saga, the book enmeshes its characters in the issues of immigration, globalisation, political violence and personal accountability. Lists of themes are often review-speak for "worthy but dull", but not in this case. Cleave immerses the reader in the worlds of his characters with an unshakable confidence that we will find them as gripping and vital as he does. Mostly, that confidence is justified." Click HERE for the full review. 

The Independent: "The taut spring of Cleave's intricate plot is a sequence of unpalatable moral decisions that cleverly bind life-choices to the guilty freight of conscience. But this novel's great strength is the squeamishly raw candour of its protagonists"

Click HERE for the full review. 

These reviews are all positive. If I happen across a more negative one, I'll post it just for contrast. 

Also coming . . . readers' guide and questions . . . .

Our 2013-2014 Books, Month by Month

October 2013, Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

November 2013, Ru, by Kim Thuy

 

 

January 2014, the Light Between Oceans, M L Stedman

 

February 2014, Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan

March 2014, The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh

April 2014, the Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood

 May 2014, Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

June 2014, Brain on Fire, Susannah Cahalan