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10 Discussion Questions for Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body

  • What is the connection between the title—Don’t Let It Get You Down—and the content of the book? Does the title strike you as earnest? Sarcastic? Passionate? Complex? 

  • Share a passage that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, or sad. What makes it memorable for you?

  • This book tackles heavy themes—body image, violence against women, state violence, racism, class, and more. Are there people in your life you'd recommend this book to? Anybody you'd hesitate to recommend it to? Why?

  • Were you surprised by your reaction to any part of this book?

  • In “On Dating White Guys While Me,” Nolan describes her former desire to be chosen by "someone at the top." Did this read to you as self-erasure, or wanting to be accepted as she was? Do you think this desire is rational given our culture? Why or why not?

  • In the essay “Bad Education,” Nolan explores how we consume “violence against women as entertainment,” interwoven with stories from her own life. Were any parts of this essay difficult to read? Were there any parts that you related to? Have you experienced any of the tensions Nolan writes about in your own entertainment choices?

  • The essays in this book are deeply corporeal, with Nolan's body and the bodies of others front and center. She writes that, ultimately, your body fundamentally protects you or makes you a target. In what ways does your body protect you or make you a target? Would you change these things about your body?

  • Nolan writes that despite the hardships of being Black in America she would not trade her Blackness for anything. Why? What animates her thinking?

  • What will you take with you from reading this book? Did it change how you think about yourself, others, or any particular topic?

  • If you got the chance to ask the author one question, what would it be?