Reading guide for Stories from Suffragette City by M.J. Rose, Fiona Davis

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. In the introduction, Kristin Hannah writes, "It is not enough to have the vote... . We must honor the women who fought for this right by voting in our elections and continuing the fight for equal rights." What does that statement mean to you?
2. How do the stories in Stories from Suffragette City highlight the importance of voting? Are there any particular stories that placed the right to vote and what was at stake in a sharper focus than others?
3. "The latest, biggest and most enthusiastic of suffrage parades, and the one which, according to the leaders of the suffrage forces, will be the last ever needed to plead their cause in New York, marched up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Fifth-Ninth Street yesterday afternoon, blazoned the whole city with the yellow of its banners, and brought out what seemed to be the larger part of the population of Manhattan to look at them."—New York Times, October 24, 1915Why do you think this parade and others were cathartic and helped women to get the vote?
4. The stories take into account a kaleidoscope of voices, people, and situations. How do the authors both reinvent the familiar imagery of suffragettes marching for the right to vote and breathe new life into history?
5. Do you have any family stories about your ancestors fighting for the right to vote? Marching for or against? Or talking about the first time they voted?
6. Which of the characters in the story did you relate to and why? What would you have done to get the vote?
7. Several of the main characters are immigrants. How do their outsider perspectives affect their experiences of the parade?
8. Do you feel the struggles and issues the men and women face in Stories from Suffragette City resonate today? How so, and how do they differ?
9. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, in Dolen Perkins-Valdez's story, doesn't march in the parade at all. Do her memories of an earlier parade and the discrimination she suffered make you reevaluate the suffrage movement as a unified coalition? What would you have done in her position?

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