These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the book.

Pre-Reading “Icebreaker”

Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not? Have you or has anyone you know encountered a ghost? What are your cultural understandings about ghosts? Does your culture include ancestors as ghosts, or does it distinguish ancestors from ghosts?

Teaching Suggestion: Use this prompt to note that different cultures and people have unique relationships to the world of the unseen or the “supernatural.” Connect this idea to the author’s subtitle, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Later, reconnect these ideas to the themes of Ghosts and Hauntings and Family and Lineage as Kingston presents the ways her family and culture understand, interact with, and label ghosts.

Personal Response Prompts

What stories have shaped how you see the world, for better or for worse?

What cultural traditions have seeped into your personal development?

What cultural traditions have you had to seek out and purposefully integrate?

Is becoming like our family inevitable, or something we can control or prevent?

Teaching Suggestion: Use these personal response prompts to engage students in text-to-self connections by grappling with some of Kingston’s themes regarding Family and Lineage.

Post-Reading Analysis

What aspects of Kingston’s life mirror the Hero’s Journey? What details in Brave Orchid’s life also mirror the Hero’s Journey? Are there aspects of your own life that mirror the Hero’s Journey? What significance do these commonalities hold regarding the universality of the human experience? About storytelling? About memoir as a genre?