Wicked Women, Magical Realism, and More Picks for Book Club

Book Club Discussion Guide

For Malas:

It’s hard to translate “malas” exactly—technically, it’s “bad girls or “bad women,” but “wicked women” comes closer to describing how the two strong-willed women in this novel are perceived by the people in their small border town. Discuss why each of these women is considered wicked by their communities.

Both women are grieving major losses both past and present, and that grief informs how they move through the world. Compare the women’s actions and attitudes. How do they mirror each other and how are they distinct?

I love that we’re starting to see many more bilingual texts these days! There is very intentional use of both Spanish and English in this book. Discuss that use and how Pilar and Lulu’s worldview is impacted by language.

If you’re familiar with the lore of La Llorona, discuss how Pilar’s story mirrors this urban legend and how the author has made Pilar a more sympathetic character (or does she?!).

For Magical/Realism:

Answer that last question in the description above: “What does the constant state of loss after colonization, enslavement, and dispossession do to the collective imagination?”

Discuss how and why magic is so often treated as “a feminized, infantilized, racialized practice done by primitive or unwell people, despite its history in the healing arts.” This sentence, in particular, is a good one to chew on: “Ancestral knowledge is reduced to ‘magic’ to strip it of legitimacy, shamed, ridiculed, or framed as dangerous because it is how disempowered people…have historically healed, rebelled, and reclaimed their narratives.”

How has pop culture helped you make sense of the world beyond giving a voice to your own emotions? Give examples.

For One of Our Kind:

All-Black spaces like the community Liberty at least pretends to be are the sort a lot of folks rail against for their exclusion, missing the point behind the need for those kinds of spaces in the first place. Discuss the idea of self-segregation.

This book falls solidly in the social horror space. Discuss what makes social horror so terrifying and impactful, and point to other examples of social horror and what the horror therein was.

Discuss the use of pregnancy and childbirth as a horror device! Won’t say more due to spoilers here, but you’ll know what I mean once you read the book.

If you could opt out, even temporarily, from the portions of your identity that are marginalized or oppressed, would you? This sounded like an easy question to me but the more I thought about it, the more complicated my answer became.

Which books have you been reading in your own book clubs? Let us know in the comments!