Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

What is one word that describes a crucial aspect of your identity? What if this word was the only thing people knew about you? What other wonderful and important things would they not know about you? How important is it to know someone’s full story before making judgments about them?

Teaching Suggestion: After having students respond to this prompt independently, you can open it up to a small-group or whole-class discussion. Students can share their personal responses and/or respond to any of the paired resources below. These paired resources can provide a variety of answers to these questions to offer students more context and perspective. This discussion can lead to philosophical questions about the nature of being an individual and a human being. As the discussion broadens, consider asking students to define what makes humans human, what commonalities humans have, and what aspects may divide humans. This discussion can provide useful background knowledge and context for the larger discussion around Sectarian Identity Crises in the novel. Consider accessing or sharing these or similar resources with students to help inform this work.