Symptomatic
Page 17
But there are other days, when I am confused. It feels closer. I wake to the sound of the sprinkler hitting the windowpane and think it is raining ice outside, and I am back in that winter city, surrounded by her objects, her perfume, her mountain of unpaid bills. Out on the street, in the glare of the afternoon sun, I see her where she is not: in the huddle of day workers waiting for the bus down to the border, or in the cool impervious smile of a Persian housewife coming out of the dry cleaner’s. Even in the face of the homeless lady at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard, with her shopping cart filled with cans—apparently a former literature professor from the University of California, who gradually lost her mind. She stands on that corner all day, yelling to whoever will listen about her lost dog. Has anybody seen her dog?
And then there was the night a few weeks ago. I was at home, watching the six-o’clock news and sipping a Corona, and I thought I heard her voice, wheezing and ragged, right outside my door. I was so certain, I muted the television’s volume, closed my eyes, and just listened, my heart beating overtime. (I really thought in that instant you had found me.) But when I got up the courage to open the door, there was, of course, nobody there.
SYMPTOMATIC
Questions for Discussion
1. Throughout the book, people call the narrator by a variety of nicknames—“chica,” “baby,” “girl”—but we never learn her real name. She remains anonymous. Why do you think Senna chose not to give her a name?
2. Symptomatic could be described as a book about racial identity—is it significant that the narrator does not explicitly address her racial background until page 52, when she describes her family—her father with an Afro, her mother blond? In what ways does the reader’s “introduction” to the narrator mirror the experience of the people she encounters in the book?
In contrast, when the narrator asks Greta about herself, the first thing Greta proffers is her racial background—“I don’t look like what I am” (p. 47). In what ways are we defined by how we appear to other people?
3. At times, the protagonist gives the impression of complete passivity, of someone being propelled by forces outside her control. When she’s upset by Andrew’s friends, rather than confronting them she runs to the bathroom—and falls asleep. Why do you think Senna chose this as her reaction rather than something more heroic? How did it make you, the reader, feel? Is the narrator’s exhaustion in this scene more than just physical? In what way?
4. The “Newlywed Game” story that Andrew’s friend tells (pp. 13–14) is a popular urban legend (in fact, a similar exchange did take place on the show, but the woman was not black and her words were different). Had you heard it before? Was it funny—and did you find it funny in the book? Why or why not? The narrator’s father has a theory that humor is “the great moment of truth” (p. 42). What do you think that means? In what ways are we defined by what—or who—we laugh at? Is a shared sense of humor necessary for friendship or romance? Do Greta and the narrator have the same sense of humor?
5. The narrator has a face that she often draws: “Ambiguous. Guarded. There was a certain refracted quality to the features that made her hard to place” (p. 15). Does this sound like a self-portrait?
Her ex-boyfriend Claude predicted that “You’ll end up on a farm someday in Vermont, with a husband named Ben and a kid named Chloe or Zoë or Max” (p. 106). Andrew tells her that she “was neither the sort to take a Greyhound nor the type to take an Amtrak. No, he’d said. I was the kind of girl who’d drive a 1974 powder blue Volvo sports coupe with sheepskin seat covers” (p. 69). It’s an elaborate fantasy—and erroneous: the narrator tells us she actually enjoys taking trains. But she doesn’t contradict him. What is it about her personality that leads others to project identities onto her? Is there something in her character that contributes to the situation with Greta? What do you think Greta sees in her? Is it just their racial similarity that makes the narrator such easy prey—or something more than that?
6. The narrator says that what she loves about reporting is “the sensation of disappearing—the delicious sense of my body fading into thin air and only my eyes remaining, two brown laser points observing somebody else’s story but never being a part of it” (p. 139). Why do you suppose that image of erasure is so appealing to her? Why is she more comfortable standing on the outside, looking in? Is this idea of journalistic objectivity realistic? Is it possible to observe an event without influencing it in some way?
7. Early in the book, when Andrew presses the narrator to tell him who she is and why she is leaving him, she contemplates giving him “My body, the lesson” (p. 35). What does she mean by this? What lesson has she used her body to teach in the past? Why is she hiding her identity now? Is it shame? Or is her reasoning more complicated? What do you think Andrew would do or feel if she were to tell him the full story? How would their relationship be different if she had told him from the start? Can you imagine different scenarios? What scenario might the narrator be trying to avoid by keeping her background a secret?
During their first interview, when Ivers asks the narrator, “Are you a quadroon?” she replies, “That’s not the word I’d use to describe myself” (p.103). But what kind of words does she use? What are the implications and associations of the word Ivers uses? The narrator tells us that her parents “both believed in ruptures and amnesia and had tried to instill in my brother and me a sense of freedom from all tradition” (p. 183). Are they right? Do you think their approach had the results they wanted?
8. The cracks in Greta’s façade of normalcy are often accompanied by outrageous racial slurs. When the cab man refuses to drive her through Central Park, she calls him “Mickey Rooney” (p. 123), and when she accuses the narrator of dating Ivers, she brings up the exhausted stereotype of the Black man—“You finally got laid by a horse-hung Negro” (p. 124). While the narrator is often passive, cautious, and silent, Greta is loud, aggressive, and offensive, not seeming to care what anybody thinks of her. Did you see the two women as opposites, or two sides of the same coin? How? What reactions did Greta’s rants inspire in you? And why do such tired old clichés still have the power to hurt and shock, both in the book and in real life? Do you see the stereotypes Greta expresses re-created at all in the popular culture around you? Are they still with us? Or is Greta a ghost from the past?
9. Symptomatic is filled with metaphors and images of mirroring and duality, right down to the page design. As the narrator leaves Andrew’s apartment for the last time, she has “the fleeting wish that there were two of me” (p. 43)—one to stay behind and comfort him as the second makes her escape. Is Greta, in both good ways and bad, an answer to that wish? Does the narrator find their similarities comforting? Would you describe Greta and the narrator as doubles, foils, or opposite sides of the same coin? Are there other people in the book who “mirror” the protagonist? How?
The narrator tells us that Greta “was always sympathetic—no, empathetic—to my every grumble and complaint” (p. 84). What’s the difference between sympathy and empathy? Is the difference significant here?
10. During their first dinner together, Greta recites Kubla Khan (p. 50) and presents an educated persona, but by the end of the novel, as Vera, she speaks entirely in slang. Can both personas be genuine? If not, which is the “true” Greta? In what ways do we all perform racial and sexual identities? Do you have to be mixed-race to experience identity confusion? How does the way you look influence the way the world sees you and treats you? Where do you see this playing itself out? When does your racial appearance serve you and when does it hold you back?
11. In what ways does the author use descriptions of all of the senses—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell—to create a gathering sense of dread? Were there images that struck you as particularly threatening—the lingering perfume in the apartment, the congealing Chinese takeout? Why?
12. Late in the book, Greta describes herself as “the fucking half-caste misfit that everybody wanted but nobody l
oved” (p. 203). She rants that “I hate that all the black men with brains or money are looking for white pussy to validate them, and all the white dudes treat me like I’m a goddamned vacation from their real life” (p. 151). In literary history, the “tragic mulatto” is a stereotype who lives on the borders of two worlds, without fitting in or being accepted by either, often characterized by various pathologies—self-hatred, alcoholism, depression, etc. The narrator’s ex-boyfriend Claude thinks that mixed-race people—he refers to them as “mules”—can represent either the best or worst of each race, “But they’ll never be ordinary.” His roommate counters “they don’t make mules like that anymore … Mulattos these days are all ordinary and well adjusted” (p. 202). Do the characters of Greta and the narrator refute these points or reinforce them? Clearly Senna is playing with the “tragic mulatto” stereotype—to what end? What kind of lasting impressions did Symptomatic make on your ideas about racial identity?
13. What do you think the book’s title means? Who or what is symptomatic—what are those symptoms, and what “disease” or disorder do they indicate? The narrator’s mother believes in homeopathic healing—curing like with like: “You have to give the body small doses of the problem, she explained, to remind it what it’s fighting against, and to trigger it into action” (p. 141). If the narrator is the one who is symptomatic, would you describe Greta as her illness, or her cure?
14. Movies characterized as film noir generally use specific plot elements, including a dark, disturbed urban location, brutal violence, surprising plot twists, and a femme fatale who nearly brings about the downfall of the hero. Symptomatic plays with genres, such as noir, as well as the psychological thriller, gothic novel, mystery novel, and even with literary conventions such as the doppelganger (or “double”). How does Symptomatic resist, or conform to, established genre conventions? How does Senna’s using these conventions play into, or against, your expectations of a novel that deals with racial identity—and particularly one that features a racially mixed heroine?