Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. Macy blends investigative journalism with deeply personal memoir to tell the story of her hometown. How did this hybrid approach affect your reading experience? Did you find one aspect more compelling than the other, and why?

2. If you’ve read Macy’s previous work, especially Dopesick (2018), how does Paper Girl compare? In what ways does her focus on her own family and hometown in this book change the impact of her social commentary?

3. What was your main takeaway from the book? Did you finish it feeling more hopeful or more pessimistic about the future of communities like Urbana, Ohio?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Macy charts the decline of the local newspaper and the rise of “information silos.” How has the media landscape changed in your own community over the years? Do you feel that the absence or presence of strong local journalism affects how you and your neighbors understand local issues?

2. The book describes people like Macy and Chris Flowers as “class migrants” who navigated from poverty to the middle class. Have you ever felt like you were straddling two different social or economic worlds? What kinds of challenges or unique perspectives can that experience create?

3. The Pell Grant was a life-changing opportunity for Macy but offers far less support for students like Silas today. How does the book’s exploration of the shifting value of education resonate with your own perceptions or experiences?

4. Macy’s conversations with her sister, Cookie, and her ex-boyfriend, Bill, highlight the profound difficulty of communicating across deep political divides. How have you navigated similar divisions in your own life?

5. Institutions like the high school band room and the Urbana Youth Center are shown to be critical safe havens for young people. Can you think of a community space that played an important role in your own life or in the life of your community? What made it so essential?

6. Silas James ultimately chooses a stable, lower-paying job over a more lucrative but potentially volatile welding career to escape his chaotic home life. What did you think of his decision? How does it challenge or confirm your own ideas about what it means to be successful?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The book makes a case that the collapse of local news is a threat to democracy. In what ways does the story of Urbana, with its vulnerability to hoaxes and conspiracy theories, serve as a microcosm for this national crisis?

2. Macy argues that policy choices, like weakening the Pell Grant and promoting trade deals that led to deindustrialization, deliberately “pulled the ladder up” for future generations. How did the book’s focus on these specific policy histories change your understanding of poverty and inequality in America?

3. What does Paper Girl reveal about the connections between economic decline, untreated trauma, and the rise of political extremism? How does it help explain the appeal of conspiracy theories and “strongman” politics in communities that feel left behind?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. How does Macy’s choice to structure the book around her and Silas’s parallel lives strengthen her overall argument? What is gained by weaving these two narratives together instead of telling them separately?

2. Unreliable vehicles are a constant presence in the story, from Silas’s broken-down car to Macy’s own rusted college Mustang. What do these recurring transportation failures symbolize about the path to upward mobility in rural America?

3. Consider the contrast between Macy’s sister, Cookie, and Silas’s mother. Both are confronted with a family member’s LGBTQ+ identity, but one evolves while the other remains rigid. What do their different journeys suggest about the capacity for personal change?

4. Macy positions herself as both an insider with intimate knowledge of Urbana and a journalist with an outsider’s perspective. How does this dual role impact her narrative voice and credibility throughout the book?

5. How does Paper Girl’s diagnosis of rural America’s problems compare to other prominent accounts, such as J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (2016)? Do they identify similar issues, and how do their proposed solutions or ultimate messages differ?

6. The narrative frequently incorporates the voices of experts like sociologists, judges, and economists. How did the inclusion of this academic analysis affect your reading of the personal stories of Silas, Cookie, and other Urbana residents?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. The Urbana Youth Center is a beacon of hope that faces significant opposition. If you were on a committee tasked with designing a new program for the center, what would you create to address the needs of teens like Silas and Maddie, and how would you pitch it to skeptical city leaders?

2. Imagine you are a journalist like Macy returning to your own hometown to write a similar book. What central story, person, or place would you focus on to illustrate the most significant changes that have occurred there over time?

3. What new public art installation would you design for Urbana’s town square to represent either a difficult, hidden part of its history or a vision of hope for its future?