Matriarch

Before we talk about the book, tell us one thing your mother or grandmother made with her hands that you still think about.

What was the first moment in these pages where you felt yourself relax into her voice, like someone had pulled out a chair for you?

Sewing runs through this whole book, dresses made, hems fixed, things made beautiful on a small budget. What has someone made for you that carried more love than money?

Hair, salons and the talk that happens in them take up real space here. Where is your version of that room, the place you go where people fuss over you and you end up telling the truth?

She writes about Galveston and the particular South she grew up in with a lot of tenderness. What place from your own childhood did this book send you back to, and what did it smell like?

There is a lot of mothering in these pages, including mothering grown people and mothering yourself. Which part of her mothering made you want to call someone?

Her family's name and her own name are things she thinks hard about, who gets to carry them and how. What name, nickname or title has been handed to you, and have you made peace with it?

She is generous about her own hard seasons without turning them into a lesson. If you were telling your life the way she tells hers, which chapter would you be gentlest with, and what would you want people to understand about it?