Where Did You Sleep Last Night A Personal History [Paperback]

When Danzy Senna's parents married in 1968, they seemed poised to defy history: two beautiful young American writers from wildly divergent backgroundsa white woman with a blue-blood Bostonian lineage and a black man, the son of a struggling single mother and an unknown father. When their marriage disintegrated eight years later, the violent, traumatic split felt all the more tragic for the hopeful symbolism it had once borne.

Decades later, Senna looks back not only at her parents' divorce but at the histories that they had tried so hard to overcome. In the tradition of James McBride'sThe Color of Water,Where Did You Sleep Last Night?is a stunningly rendered personal heritage that mirrors the complexities of race, class, and ethnicity in the United States (Booklist).

Questions for Discussion

1. The memoir's title evokes an image of someone who is accused of being promiscuous. How did the title affect your reading?

2. In the opening scenes, Danzy describes living in a building that is multicultural to the point of absurdity (p. 17), in contrast to the stratified Boston of her youth. Why does that form of tolerance vex her?

3. Danzy describes the hardships faced when her father, Carl, ignored child support payments. She also describes Carl's fixation on an imaginary fortune he believes his ex-wife possesses. How does money influence the way Danzy's family interacts? What do their beliefs about money say about them?

4. What attracted Danzy's parents to each other? Could anything have saved their marriage? To what extent is Danzy's anguish the product of her parents? To what extent is it the product of the generations before them?

5. Why was Carl able to remain brutally frank about the suffering he experienced at the Zimmer Home, while others (such as Ernestine) grew up glorifying the orphanage or rationalizing the abuse? What does Danzy begin to see in her father when she considers his childhlC"