Summer Reading Program

Reader's Guide - Honky by Dalton Conley

Prologue (pages xiii-xiv)

Dalton Conley lays out some basic ideas in this prologue, including giving us the bare outlines of the situation that led to his writing of Honky.

1. Where did he grow up?  Why was that unusual?
2. In what way was his childhood like a “social science experiment” (xiii)?
3. According to Conley, how do African Americans and Americans of European descent look at race differently?
4. What do you think he means by “race and class are nothing more than a set of stories we tell ourselves to get through the world, to organize our reality” (xiv)?
5. What lesson did his mother’s story of his attempt to kidnap a black baby teach the young Conley?

 

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