Book Club Discussion Questions and Guide for The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

1. The passage of time is evident in The Wilderness as we follow these five women through their 20-year friendship. Most chapters are dated by the year; however, the story is not told in strict chorological order. How does this immersion in and estrangement from time orient or disorient you? How does it give you a fuller picture of womanhood?
2. On page 241 Flournoy writes "It might not take much for her to end up in the wilderness again." What is the wilderness? Have you experienced it before or are you experiencing it now?
3. Part Three introduces a dramatic shift in the perspective of the novel: from the third-person to the first-person perspective where the narrator is no longer explicitly named, yet somehow, we still know who is speaking. What effect did this have on you?
4. On page 191, after Desiree buys a meal for an unhoused person, January tells her that she should have given him money instead. Have you ever experienced a conflict with a friend that unearthed your own moral code? Did you feel similarly set in your ways or were you more open-minded?
5. Danielle and Desiree have a strained relationship as sisters, and although they do not speak, they worry about each other and check-in on each other indirectly through their friends. What might explain this intensity of feeling but impossibility of saying?
6. Through the book, we see the characters encounter various uprisings in response to social conditions in their cities. How did uprisings during the pandemic or beyond affect the area where you lived? How did they affect your friendships?
7. Desiree laments Nakia leaving New York City for Los Angeles in order to pursue her dreams in the restaurant industry. How do we cope when friends we love move to faraway places? How do we support them even if it means being left behind?
8. Over the course of their twenty-year friendship, the women watch each other age and change. Looking back on their younger years as women in their mid-lives enhances the memories they share and the feeling of closeness they experience, even many years later when they are in different locations. How do memories, time, and space interact with and change one another? How are these things connected for you?
9. The women engage in sexuality in various ways throughout the novel. How does sexuality liberate and, perhaps, limit them?
10. The rift between Desiree and Danielle is in part due to their respectively complex relationships with their grandfather, Nolan, and the fact that Desiree did not inform her sister that she was aiding in Nolan's wishes to end his own life. Death is a motif in the novel. What kinds of things—both physical and emotional—are left behind when a friend or family member, especially an elderly one, dies? How might the surviving relationships change? What duty do we owe to those who have passed, to those who are grieving, and to ourselves?
11. Monique's blog, Black in the Stacks, offers an exhilarating, first-person account of her career journey and reflections on her questions about the world. What is gained by processing the world through writing about it? Do you know of any real-life Black in the Stacks blogs or voices of today that offer a similar catharsis?
12. January's experiences with pregnancy and motherhood become central to her character's journey throughout the novel, and change the way she interacts with her friends. Has becoming a parent or caregiver shifted relationship dynamics in your life?

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