Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel
Page 18
2. Based on Tomas’s comments, when Leila first joins the tech crew, she assumes all of the girls will be lesbians. In fact, none of them is. Have you ever had a similar experience with stereotypes? How did you handle the situation?
3. On page 138, Tayrn says, “Look, Leila, high school sucks for everybody.” Is this true? Do certain people have an easier time in high school than others? If so, why?
4. Throughout most of the novel, Tomas seems comfortable with his sexuality. But on pages 148–49, we learn how difficult it was for him to come out and how hard he finds high school. Tomas suspects that Leila will have an easier time coming out than he did. Why does Tomas believe it’s easier to come out as a lesbian than as a gay man? Do you agree with him?
5. When did you first notice that Saskia might not be who Leila thought she was?
6. Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel is set in an affluent northeastern prep school. How might Leila’s coming out have been different if the novel were set at a public school, or in another part of the country or world? Would the story have been different if Leila had been another ethnicity?
7. In Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, Sara Farizan layers her love triangles. For example, Tess has a crush on Greg, but Greg has a crush on Leila; Leila has a crush on Saskia, who may or may not reciprocate. Did you expect the characters to couple up in the way that they did? Why or why not?
8. Why did Leila’s mom want to be the one to tell Leila’s dad that Leila is a lesbian?
9. When Saskia tells the school that Leila is a lesbian, the only person who seems upset by the news is Greg. Why do you think that Greg has the reaction that he does? Why is Tess’s reaction so different from Greg’s?
10. By the end of the novel we learn that most students at Armstead are keeping secrets about themselves. In most cases, when the secret is revealed, it doesn’t have the negative impact that the secret-keeper anticipated. Is there ever a case when it’s best to keep something about your identity a secret? How do you know when it’s a good time to reveal something unexpected about yourself?
Mark Karlsberg
SARA FARIZAN is the author of If You Could Be Mine. The daughter of Iranian immigrants, Sara lives in San Francisco, California, but Boston, Massachusetts, will always be home. She is an MFA graduate of Lesley University and holds a BA in film and media studies from American University. Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel is her second novel.
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Published by
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an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
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© 2014 by Sara Farizan.
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ISBN 978-1-61620-435-8