Summer Reading Program

Reader's Guide - Honky by Dalton Conley

Chapter Nine: “Sesame Street” (pages 103-10)

Content Questions:

1. Why don’t he and his sister like going to Pennsylvania for summer vacation?
2. What does James take from Conley?
3. What does Sean, the Sesame Street kid, do to Conley after the baseball game?
4. Why does Conley say that “this episode with Sean was the best thing that could have happened to me” (110)?

Discussion Questions & Journal Ideas:

1. Conley writes that “the end of June—just before we left New York, but after school let out—was the only time I felt whole” (104).  What do you think he means by that?  What does this statement reveal about how he viewed himself and his life at that point?
2. Explain why the title of this chapter, “Sesame Street,” can be read as ironic, given what occurs in this chapter.  What does the phrase “Sesame Street” conjure in your mind?  How does that contrast with Conley’s narrative in this chapter?
3. The chapter concludes with a key point Conley makes in this book as a whole: “I will never know the true cause and effect in the trajectory of my life.  And maybe it is better that way.  I can believe what I want to believe.  This is the privilege of the middle and upper classes in America—the right to make up the reasons things turn out the way they do, to construct our own narratives rather than having the media and society do it for us” (110).  What does he mean by this statement?  Can you think of a time when you have been able to construct your own narrative of your life?

 

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