Reading Guide for Remembrance by Rita Woods

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. The novel opens with Gaelle's dream, evoking the tragic memory of the earthquake that destroyed her family. Discuss the memories that are woven into the novel's title, Remembrance. How is the act of remembrance passed between Gaelle's ancestors? How has remembrance been communicated from one generation to the next in your family?
2. At the beginning of Part Two, we read about the day Abigail and her sister were captured near their village in Africa. How did Abigail find the will and the courage to survive?
3. What did the novel teach you about the Haitian Revolution? If you were Hercule, would you have become a Maroon? In what ways can fiction help us understand the truth about actual historical events? In the novel and in real life, how is history repeating itself?
4. When Abigail is forced to continue her life in bondage in New Orleans, how does her world change (both her inner world and the landscape itself )? How do the techniques of oppression remain the same? How does Louisiana's culture echo Haiti's?
5. At first, Margot dismisses Veronique's offer to help her escape through the Underground Railroad. How would you have responded? Would you have trusted Ned?
6. Josiah speaks frequently about the gods and the power of the spirit world. How is that power preserved across time, and across distances of thousands of miles? Who are the novel's most powerful healers?
7. What were your theories about Gaelle's mysterious patient (Winter)? Did you perceive her as wise or dangerous?
8. When Dix asked Louisa to cut him loose in chapter 47, did you trust him? Why would he defy the slavers?
9. How were you affected by the novel's braided timeline? What is the effect of watching the characters' hopes and fears intertwine?
10. At the heart of the novel is the desperate quest for home. What does home mean to the characters? How do languages become a kind of home for them? How do you personally define "home?" What does the community of Remembrance impart to its residents?

Guide by Amy Root Clements

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