Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. Which of Haraway’s case studies—pigeons, dogs, mares, sheep, butterflies—stayed with you most clearly, and why?

2. How did you feel about Haraway’s writing style, with its coined words like “Chthulucene,” “Terrapolis,” and “oddkin”?

3. Did the book leave you more hopeful or more troubled about ecological futures?

4. What did you make of the decision to end the book inside the Camille fabulation rather than with a conclusion?

5. Was there a chapter where Haraway’s argument felt most persuasive or one where it felt hardest to follow? Why?

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

1. Which animals or living beings do you already share daily life with, and would you call those relationships kin?

2. How does Haraway’s slogan “Make Kin Not Babies” sit with your own thinking about family and reproduction (2)? Does her expansion of the argument and conditions for this mentality align with your beliefs?

3. Have you ever felt the kind of cross-species shame that Haraway describes after learning about the PMU mares? If so, have you acted on it, and why?

4. What about the Camille fabulation connected with you most, and why? Do you feel that storytelling plays a central role in your life?

5. When you encounter ecological grief in your own life, do you find yourself wanting to fix, mourn, or look away? Did the book change how you feel about your instinctual response?

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

1. How does the choice between “Anthropocene,” “Capitalocene,” and “Chthulucene” as names for the present shape public conversation about climate?

2. What do the DES and Premarin histories reveal about how pharmaceutical research treats women, animals, and bodies as test sites?

3. The book draws on Indigenous knowledge from Navajo, Inupiat, and Mazahua communities; how does Haraway position herself in relation to those sources? What is her analytical purpose in including these perspectives?

4. What kinds of institutions would have to change for the Communities of Compost to be possible, and which seem most resistant?

5. How does the book’s account of Beatriz da Costa’s “PigeonBlog” complicate the line between art, science, and activism in real-world events?

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

1. How does Haraway’s first-person voice, with her dog Cayenne and her own fieldwork, change how the theoretical claims read?

2. The string figure recurs as both image and method; how does it organize the way chapters move from one example to the next?

3. What changes when the book shifts from argumentative essay in Chapters 1 through 7 to speculative fiction in Chapter 8?

4. How does Haraway use named collaborators—Stengers, Despret, Tsing, Margulis—as part of the book’s form rather than only its citations?

5. The book’s keywords (sympoiesis, holobiont, response-ability, oddkin) are repeated across chapters. How does that repetition function in conveying Haraway’s argumentative points and themes?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. If you wrote a sixth Camille generation set in 2525, what threatened species would you choose, and why?

2. Sketch a string-figure account of one relationship in your own life, passing the pattern hand to hand.

3. Imagine the founding charter for a Community of Compost in your region; what three rules would you write first?

4. Pick one extinct or critically endangered species and draft a short passage in the voice of a Speaker for the Dead.

5. Rewrite a scene from Chapter 5 about Cayenne and DES from the perspective of one of the Premarin mares.