101 pages 3 hours read

Sungju Lee, Susan Elizabeth McClelland

Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2016

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Essay Topics

1.

Every Falling Star is written as a first-person narrative memoir that borrows many literary devices from fiction. Identify three to four literary devices used in the memoir and examine why Sungju and McClelland may have decided to use them in a work of nonfiction.

2.

At times an older narrator steps in to comment on the situation being described. How does this older narrator differ from the child narrator? How does this shift in narration change how you interpret the text?

3.

Sungju often returns to ideas about yu-reong, or ghosts, that haunt people or places he encounters. What function do ghosts and “hauntings” serve in this memoir?