Like Family
Page 25
Questions and topics for discussion
Paula and her sisters are abandoned by their parents at a very tender age, and yet their bond as sisters remains unshakable. In what ways is the sisters’ relationship fortified by the breakup of their family?
How does Bub’s ultimate betrayal change Paula’s perspective? Is Bub a bad man, or merely human?
Paula and her sisters are shuttled from one house to another during their formative years, each time with the hope that they’ll finally settle comfortably — but nearly every family they join suffers from its own problems. What does this suggest about the meaning or ideal of family?
Penny and Teresa are able to welcome their mother back into their lives with relative ease. Paula, by contrast, remains unsure. Why? Is it an issue of forgiveness or is it something else that makes Paula hold back?
When Paula hears from Hilde during her pregnancy, she’s shocked. And yet she says, “The Lindberghs weren’t our family and couldn’t be the parents we needed them to be, but we did belong to each other” (page 259). What does Paula mean by this?
Each of the three McLain sisters has a strong personality. What particular traits do you attribute to each? How do you think their respective attitudes helped one another? Hurt one another?
There are two epigraphs at the beginning of the memoir, one from an Emily Dickinson poem and the other from a Neil Young song. Why do you think the author chose these quotes? What does each say about Paula’s story?
Is Like Family an indictment of the foster care system?
Paula’s “head clearing” trip to Michigan stretches into several years — she stays long enough to earn a degree, to marry, and to have a child. Then she begins to move all over the country, relocating in turn to several different states, but she never again returns to California. Why do you think Paula doesn’t settle in one place? Why does she avoid California?
Do Paula and her sisters merely survive their childhood, or do they thrive despite its horrors and instability?
Paula McLain’s suggestions for further reading
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard
Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
Survival Stories: Memoirs of Crisis, edited by Kathryn Rhett
The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care by Nina Bernstein
The Heart Knows Something Different: Teenage Voices from the Foster Care System, edited by Al Desetta
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Cruddy and One Thousand Demons by Lynda Barry
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Sula by Toni Morrison
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips
They Came Like Swallows and So Long See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Tiny One by Eliza Minot
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
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“A sometimes startling, always engaging view of the hidden world in our own backyard.” — Elle
Hailed as a memoir of unexpected beauty and arresting power, Like Family tells the story of three young sisters who are abandoned by their mother and father and raised as wards of the Fresno County, California, court. McLain’s unflinching recollection of being shuttled from foster home to foster home strikes a universal chord, capturing the loneliness, uncertainty, and odd pleasures that are the very nature of adolescence.
“Like Family is a personal triumph. … McLain’s story is one of nobility and of the strength of a young woman’s spirit.” —Wisconsin State Journal
“The first thing that strikes the reader about Like Family is that the author has chosen her words very carefully, fastening her story to a spectacularly stark but beautifully resonant prose.” —Kathleen O’Grady, BUST
“A powerful and haunting memoir.” —Anne Martino, Ann Arbor News
Paula McLain received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and in the anthology American Poetry: The Next Generation. Her first book of poetry, Less of Her, was published in 1999. She lives in Ohio.