The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The Great Migration and our BookBrowse Review of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Hattie is, by any measure, a complicated, difficult woman. Did you love her, hate her, find it difficult to have sympathy for her? Is she a good mother? Why or why not?
   


2. Why do you suppose the author chose to have Philadelphia and Jubilee die in the novel's first chapter? The novel moves backward and forward in time. What function is served by showing us this loss at the outset? How does this serve the novel and inform our understanding of Hattie?
   


3. "In Georgia the preacher had called the North a New Jerusalem. The congregation said he was a traitor to the cause of the southern Negro. He was gone the next day on a train for Chicago. Others, too, were going, disappearing from their shops and their fields. All of those souls, escaped from the South, were at this very moment glowing with promise in the wretched winters of the cities of the North. Hattie knew her babies would survive. Though they were small and struggling, Philadelphia and Jubilee were already among those luminous souls, already the beginning of a new nation." Discuss this passage in relation to the novel's themes. In fact, Hattie is mistaken here; her babies do not survive. What does this say about the provenance of the new nation of which she speaks?
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.