Suggested Discussion Questions for DLIGYD

• What is the connection between the title—Don’t Let It Get You Down—and the content of the book? Does the title strike you as earnest? Sarcastic? Passionate? Complex? 

• Share a passage that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, or sad. What makes it memorable for you?

• This book tackles heavy themes—body image, violence against women, state violence, racism, class, and more. Are there people in your life you'd recommend this book to? Anybody you'd hesitate to recommend it to? Why?

• Were you surprised by your reaction to any part of this book?

• Nolan writes movingly about her daughter—how she loves deeply and fears deeply for a small human who will be a woman among misogynists, who will be Black among racists. Do you relate to these feelings? Do you think the people who raised you would relate to them?

• In “On Dating White Guys While Me,” Nolan describes her former desire to be chosen by "someone at the top." Did this read to you as self-erasure, or wanting to be accepted as she was? Do you think this desire is rational given our culture? Why or why not?

• In the essay “Bad Education,” Nolan explores how we consume “violence against women as entertainment,” interwoven with stories from her own life. Were any parts of this essay difficult to read? Were there any parts that you related to? Have you experienced any of the tensions Nolan writes about in your own entertainment choices?

• Nolan researched her family history to inform her writing, particularly regarding how her family intersected with chattel slavery (and struggles with ongoing racism). Have you done this kind of research in your own life? Why or why not? What do you suspect you would find? What would you hope to learn or not learn? In your family, who would you feel comfortable sharing difficult information with? Who would you worry about sharing it with?

• The essays in this book are deeply corporeal, with Nolan's body and the bodies of others front and center. She writes that, ultimately, your body fundamentally protects you or makes you a target. In what ways does your body protect you or make you a target? Would you change these things about your body?

• Nolan writes that despite the hardships of being Black in America she would not trade her Blackness for anything. Why? What animates her thinking?

• Nolan describes herself as “in-between,” as someone with an identity that is full of ambiguities. What does she mean by this? How do you make sense of the ambiguities in your own identity?

• Are there topics you wished Nolan had written about that she didn't?

• Compare the opening of this book with the ending. Has the author made a journey from one emotional/mental/physical place to another? Do you see yourself in either place?

• What will you take with you from reading this book? Did it change how you think about yourself, others, or any particular topic?

• If you got the chance to ask the author one question, what would it be?