Aerogrammes: And Other Stories
Page 17
14. How did you feel about the premise of “Girl Marries Ghost”? Did you find this story essentially comic or essentially tragic? What are the benefits of marrying a ghost?
15. Discuss James’s use of humor in the collection. Many of the book’s most heartbreaking stories are also motored by absurdity and humor. Where did you find this to be the case, and to what effect?
16. Themes of displacement and exile, of physical or emotional alienation and dislocation, reverberate throughout many of Tania James’s stories. Where do you think these predicaments are most powerfully and tellingly expressed? What do you think James is trying to tell us about the nature of the immigrant experience in America and abroad?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING:
Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank; Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family; Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic; Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Also by Tania James
Atlas of Unknowns