Discussion Questions – Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work

1.In the foreword, Phillips’s sister, Linda, mentioned that Delores loved words, their rhythm and sound. Which of her poems best encapsulates this love of words and sound?

2.How does the imagery of lynching in “Cousin Nathan” compare to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Haunted Oak” (1913) and Claude McKay’s “The Lynching” (1922)?

3.How is theme of motherhood reflected in “Forgive Me Child,” “Shalana,” and “Queen of Rub-a-Dub”?

4.How does Phillips use humor in her poetry?

5.Compare Phillips’s narrative technique in “Grand Slam” to Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” (1983) where she set out to craft a story absent of racial markers.

6.How does the landscape and setting in Phillips’s novels amplify the aliveness of her characters?

7.Compare the themes of care, love, and aging in The Renwood Circle Stories to Alice Munro’s short story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001).

8.What are the similarities and differences between the Zyma character in The Renwood Circle Stories and Zyma in No Ordinary Rain? Why do you think Phillips held on to this character in both her short stories and novel?

9.Write the next scene of Stumbling Blocks. What do you think happens when Tangy Mae returns home?

10.How do you think No Ordinary Rain will end? What might become of Zyma?

11.In the afterword, Trudier Harris remarks that although Stumbling Blocks is the sequel to The Darkest Child, readers should try to read the novel as a separate entity. Why might Harris encourage this?

12.Unlike Stumbling Blocks, readers at times experience No Ordinary Rain through Zyma’s and Girlie’s point of view. How does Phillips use point of view as a narrative technique in No Ordinary Rain? What do we learn as readers by being in their heads? Are there other characters that might benefit from their own first-person chapters?

13.Steverson says in the introduction that Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work is vital to recovery work of African American writers. Research other examples of recovery work in African American literature and share your findings.

14.Both novels, Stumbling Blocks and No Ordinary Rain are unfinished. What other fiction and non-fiction texts in American literature have been published unfinished? What is the value of reading texts that are unfinished?