The Sentence

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Often, courses in American literature may not include Indigenous American storytellers in the curriculum. What novels written by Indigenous Americans have you read in the past? What themes and key ideas do you recall?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may or may not have encountered texts written by Indigenous American authors in past classes. Readers who cannot recall having read many or any works by Indigenous Americans might instead research and generate a list of works they would like to investigate further or read in the future. Helping them generate this list also helps to fill in the gaps of the types of literature they have encountered. This question provides an opportunity to introduce the theme of The Resilience and Importance of Indigenous American Identity.

• “Indigenous American Authors for Your Reading List” is an article from the Library of Congress that includes many prominent Indigenous American writers and information about their work.
• “Indigenous American Author Tommy Orange Feels a ‘Burden to Set the Record Straight’” is an NPR article in which Orange discusses what it means to be an Indigenous American author.

2. In The Sentence, a bookstore is designated as an essential business when the COVID-19 pandemic occurs. What have you already learned or what might you surmise about the various ways in which the pandemic affected small businesses?

Teaching Suggestion: Birchbark Books is an important setting in this novel; it is a crucial part of the novel’s plot. Additionally, this is the first novel that Erdrich has written that takes place in the very recent past. Encourage students to think back to their experiences during the pandemic and the reasons why it would have been important for a bookstore to be designated as essential.

• TIME wrote a piece about the effects of COVID-19 on independent bookstores.
• Publishers Weekly discussed how bookstores made efforts to stay open during the pandemic.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Much of this novel takes place in a real-life bookstore called Birchbark Books. Throughout the novel, we learn about its owner (the author of the novel) and many of its employees, each of whom have different approaches to working at the store. Similarly, we meet customers who use the bookstore for a variety of reasons that sometimes extend beyond just buying a book. What feelings do you associate with bookstores? What memories do you have of buying books there? How have bookstores changed over time, in your experience?

Teaching Suggestion: Readers may encounter an important affective response to Birchbark Books in the novel; thinking about their personal experiences and emotions regarding bookstores can help student empathize with Tookie, the other employees, and the customers.

Differentiation Suggestion: Visual learners or those interested in artistic communication might draw and caption an image that symbolizes their experience with bookstores to accompany or support their written response.