Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. How did Islas’s nonlinear structure feel to you as a reader? Did you find that jumping through time with Miguel Chico made the family’s history more impactful, or was it challenging to follow the different storylines and characters at first?

2. Like Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), this novel chronicles a family across multiple generations. How did the Angel family’s story feel different from or similar to other multi-generational sagas you’ve read? What, for you, makes their experience in the borderlands particularly unique?

3. Which character or storyline resonated most powerfully with you, and what about it captured your attention?

4. Arturo Islas’s follow-up novel, Migrant Souls (1990), continues the story of the Angel family. If you’ve had the chance to read it, how did it expand on the themes introduced here? If not, based on this book, what aspects of the family’s story would you be most curious to see explored further?

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

1. Mama Chona imposes a strict cultural identity on her family, prizing their Spanish heritage while suppressing their Indigenous roots. Think about the values or stories that have been passed down in your own family or community. How do they shape your sense of identity? Have you ever felt the need to question or redefine them?

2. Miguel Chico positions himself as the “family analyst,” trying to make sense of the past from a distance. Have you ever taken on the role of the observer or historian in your own family or group of friends? What are the challenges and rewards of looking at personal history from a more analytical perspective?

3. The idea of home is central to the novel. Miguel Chico lives in San Francisco but remains emotionally tied to the desert borderlands. Does your own definition of home relate more to a physical place, a community of people, or a collection of memories?

4. Nina turns to spiritualism to cope with her grief after Tony’s death, a path her family doesn’t fully understand. Have you ever found yourself exploring a new philosophy or religious practice in response to an unexpected life event?

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

1. Scholar Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands as a psychological space of negotiation and hybridity. How does the novel portray this experience of living between two cultures, languages, and national identities? Where do you see this tension playing out most clearly in contemporary society?

2. The family’s flight from the Mexican Revolution is a foundational trauma that shapes Mama Chona’s entire worldview. In what ways does this historical event continue to affect later generations of the Angel family, who didn’t experience it firsthand? How does this depiction of generational trauma reflect the contemporary experiences of immigration and alienation?

3. Felix’s death sheds light on the social pressures surrounding traditional norms of heterosexual masculinity. What does the novel’s examination of the expectations of manhood within this community reflect about the broader discourse about toxic masculinity in our contemporary world?

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

1. The novel unfolds through Miguel Chico’s fragmented and non-chronological memories. What is the effect of telling the story this way? How does this narrative choice reinforce the central theme of a fractured borderlands identity?

2. What significance does the pre-Christian Rain God hold in a story so dominated by Mama Chona’s rigid Catholicism? How does this Indigenous deity challenge or coexist with the family’s religious framework, especially in the novel’s final scenes?

3. Physical illness and the body serve as motifs throughout the novel, from Miguel Chico’s surgery to Mama Chona’s uterine prolapse. How does the novel use the body’s vulnerabilities to comment on the family’s spiritual and psychological ill health?

4. Choose a pair of contrasting characters, such as the pragmatic Nina and the idealistic Juanita, or the outcast Mema and the pious Jesus Maria. How does the dynamic between them help to illuminate one of the novel’s central themes?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. Design a memorial for the Angel family. What form would it take, and what specific symbols or elements from the novel would you incorporate to represent their complex legacy of love, trauma, and resilience?

2. Write a transcript of a conversation between Juanita and Lola during their final private meeting before Lola moved to Los Angeles. What do you think they would have needed to say to each other to find some form of peace or resolution?

3. You’ve been invited to one of the Angel family’s weekly poker games. Which character would you most want to sit next to, and what’s one question you’d hope to ask them over the course of the evening?