Summer Reading Program

Reader's Guide - Honky by Dalton Conley

Chapter Four: “Race Lessons” (pages 37-52)

Content Questions:

1. What experience does Alexandra, Conley’s sister, have in nursery school that begins to open her eyes about the differences between herself and the other children there?
2. When her hair won’t stay in its cornrows, and when her friends tease her, how does Alexandra react?
3. Which class is Conley placed in at Public School 4?  Why?
4. How does his first teacher treat him differently from the other children in his class, and what effect does it have on him?
5. Why won’t he go to the bathroom at school?
6. In what ways does being in the Chinese classroom affect Conley?
7. How do his parents manage to put him in a better school?

Discussion Questions & Journal Ideas:

1. Conley opens this chapter with the words, “Learning race is like learning a language” (37).  Explain what you think he means by this statement.  How does it relate to the focus of this chapter, and the chapter’s title, “race matters”?
2. Without an understanding of how culture values the races differently, what message does Alexandra take away from her experiences with her hair as a child?  How, and why, do Conley’s experiences in his first school begin to change that for him? 
3. Who are the different “they”s Conley talks about in this chapter?  What do they have in common?
4. At the end of the chapter, Conley writes, “I now knew that, based on the color of my skin, I would be treated a certain way [. . .] .  [I]t was [the teachers], not the other students, who made my skin color an issue.  The kids had only picked up on the adult cues and then reinterpreted them” (51-52).  What does this say about racism and where it comes from?  Do you agree with Conley’s interpretation?  Why or why not?

 

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