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2021 Read Across Texas: Recovery Discussion Questions for Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here by Nancy Wayson DinanA program of the Texas Center for the Book. Published by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Read Across Texas: Recovery

Discussion Questions for Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here by Nancy Wayson Dinan

1. When Boyd’s family learned the bridge was out while she was still missing, Lucy Maude’s soon-to-be ex-husband Kevin geared up to make a speech. Lucy Maude knew “he didn’t have anything in particular to add to their situation, but that he didn’t like this raw emotion that felt like panic and he considered it his job to orate them out of it.” Describe a situation like this one. Where emotions are real, but someone takes charge to try to “help” and “orate to fix” a situation that can’t be fixed in the moment?

2. There are multiple types of social networks and connections that exist in this book. Family and community are the most obvious, but also Boyd’s connections with people of other lifetimes, between people from different life experiences such as the commune where Carla spends the night. What role do those networks play in relation to recovery and are some more valuable than others?

3. When your whole world is turned upside down, how does that translate to moving forward? As with the pandemic, there is an opportunity to “stay where you are” or “re-access and shift,” and what might that look like?

4. Dinan writes, “The storm had been odd, revealing how tenuous the layer of civilization stretched over the world was.” Do you agree with those observations? If so, how does

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2021 Read Across Texas: Recovery Discussion Questions for Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here by Nancy Wayson DinanA program of the Texas Center for the Book. Published by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

civilization manifest itself in this book and how is it shown to be thin? Is civilization a match for the force of the natural world?

5. The Texas Center for the Book had a conversation with Dinan, and she said “Recovery is not necessarily restoration.” Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?

6. Do you have someone in your life who needs recovery? If so, did you relate and feel for Boyd in the book and the way she consistently put others ahead of herself?

7. Like with the scarecrow girl, how can trying to help sometimes drag you under?

8. Dinan quotes Charlotte’s Web, “And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it’s always hard to sleep.” What are times in your life when you related to E.B. White’s words?

9. The year 2020 was unprecedented for the entire world, and the ramifications are still in effect. If the events of the 2020s were described in a book read by someone who didn’t live them, how might the reader be in disbelief?

10. In Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here there is a moment where the young officer at guarding the bridge extends help to Boyd. He explains he’s studying at the University of Texas at San Antonio and works at H-E-B. When he refers to his role of helping with the aftermath of the storm, he says, “This isn’t real life.” During the pandemic, how might “real life” be discussed like a distant character in our stories? How have you heard the term used, and do you see it helping recovery?