Any Known Blood, Lawrence Hill

Any Known Blood
Questions

(Tansley Reads Rating: 69%)

1. ICEBREAKER: Have you ever discovered that a favourite family story was not true in the version you remembered?
2. Langston’s relationship with his father is very strained, much like many of the others in the book. Does that have something to do with the family history? Or a family habit of non-communication? Is this like the legacy of the residential schools – families pulled apart generations ago forgot how to be family, lost the knack of intimacy and have passed that along to their children?
3. Do you get the impression that in a family with so many shades of colour, people of different shades resent each other somehow? Does the current LC feel alienated from the black part of his family by the fact that he is so light he could “pass”? Is that why his Aunt Mill is slow to accept him?
4. The first LC to become a preacher seemed to come at it “sideways” – no background, etc. and then his son did it out of desperation when money was short. Yet their legacy at the Baltimore church was impressive. Do you think they were sincere in their faith or just talented as preachers?
5. The family believes that the first LC was killed at Harper’s Ferry, but in fact he lived on for many years, even attending his son’s university graduation. Yet somehow the story of that appearance wasn’t known to the current LC. So many stories had been told, but many of them seemed to hold only a tinge of truth. Why?
6. Did you find it confusing that the story unfolded as LC discovered the pieces of it – i.e. in reverse chronological order? Would the author’s story have worked if he’d told the family story in its “correct” order? Did it gain or lose suspense this way?
7. Were you surprised that Oakville was a terminus of the Underground Railway? That there used to be a thriving black community there? That the KKK was at one time active in Oakville?
8. In the second generation there were 2 other LCs. They disappeared. Did you wonder if one of them might have family somewhere who might turn up in this story?
9. Yoyo’s satire – his attitude to North America, his disdain of Americans calling themselves African. ???????????
10. Are the families in the story held together by women? Do the Crane men have too much centrifugal force for them to be able to?
11. Will knowing his family’s story change Langston’s life?