Thursday, October 28th 5pm - Online, Zoom
https://wvu.zoom.us/my/terrarogerson?pwd=R1NVd3djUExUYmRjVTRZQzdzREU4dz09
1. On pages 209-211, Gifty discusses the concept of Anhedonia–”the feeling of ‘nothing’”– and the role it plays in both her professional and personal life. What does the inclusion of this reveal about how Gifty is able to make sense of Nana's addiction and her mother’s depression? How does this scientific explanation differ from the racial(172) and religious (217) lenses that are also applied to Nana and Gifty’s mother’s mental health throughout the book?
2. When Gifty finishes her experiments with the mice and focuses on her writing, she explains, “My papers were dry and direct. They captured the facts of my experiments, but said nothing of what it had felt like to hold a mouse in my hands and feel its entire body thump against my palms as it breathed, as its heartbeat... I wanted to tell someone about the huge wave of relief I felt every time I watched an addicted mouse refuse the lever. That gesture, that refusal, that was the point of the work, the triumph of it, but there was no way to say any of that” (251). How does Gifty’s care and appreciation for her lab mice differ from other depictions of animal testing?
3. On page 256, Gifty details the end of her relationship with Raymond, saying: “...I had done it again, ruined everything. I was thinking that I could never shake my ghosts, never, never. There they were in every word I wrote, in every lab, in every relationship.” What ghosts is Gifty referring to here? How do we witness these ghosts in Gifty’s other romantic and sexual relationships throughout the book?
4. On page 263, the narrative flashes forward to Gifty and Han’s life in New Jersey, where, “Once every few months, or whenever the mood strikes, I take the long way home from the lab I run at Princeton, just so that I can step into that church.”What does it mean when she says that Han has “never heard the knock, and so he’ll never know what it means to miss that sound, to listen for it” (264)? What role does her religious upbringing play in her life at the end of the novel, and how has it evolved throughout her journey?
