The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Conditions for People with Disabilities in 1930s America and our BookBrowse Review of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. In The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride takes readers into the lives of the people who live on Chicken Hill, a neighborhood of "ramshackle houses and dirt roads where the town's Blacks, Jews, and immigrant whites who couldn't afford any better lived." As you read about Chicken Hill, how did you envision it? Did its description prompt memories of places that you've lived or recall from your past?
2. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is owned by Moshe Ludlow and his wife, Chona, who runs it, and it's the center of neighborhood life. Are there places like that from your own life or in your past? How are they similar to (or different from) the Heaven & Earth?
3. Moshe desegregated the local theater by booking Black entertainers for Black audiences, and McBride writes in detail about the famous acts that played there. How courageous do you think Moshe had to be to do this? Have you ever tried to change the traditions of a place or an organization?

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