Reading Seattle: The City in Prose

Supplementary Questions For Teachers

Part 1: Coming Into Focus (1930s - 1980s)

1. How does Archie Binns shape his discussion of Seattle? How do we see the city geographically? Historically?

2. Binns writes that Lake Washington and Mercer Island, with its floating bridge, are "part of the harbor of Seattle." Is this real or fanciful?

3. Why are the madrona trees on Magnolia Bluff so important to Binns? What do they and other flora on Queen Anne Hill reveal? As Binns imagines it, what did one of Captain Vancouver's men see from his ship when he looked at the coastline here? What does Binn mean when he writes "Juan de Fuca invented these waters from Venice?"

4. Who was Henry Smith and how is he important for this narrative? How was his life related to that of Jim Hill's? Who were the Dennys?

5. On what basis does Binns liken the settlers of Alki Point to "pilgrims?"

6. What are the guardian spirits of the city, according to Binns?

7. What was Chief Seattle's hard choice? How did Seattle's speech compare to Governor Stevens's? What are Chief Seattle's main points?

Josephine Herbst, From The Executioner Waits (fiction)

1. How do the Wendel girls regard The White Elephant?

2. What is meant by the phrase "the armistice had let everyone down?"

3. How does the boarding house lady Mrs. Caspar regard the Wendel girls?

4. What were President Wilson's Fourteen Points, about which there is much "wrangling?"

5. What are Mrs. Caspar's fears about the Seattle General Strike?

6. About what do Rosamond and Mr. Draper disagree?

Nancy Wilson Ross, From Farthest Reach: Oregon and Washington (nonfiction)

1. What do Portland and Seattle have in common?

2. What did the 1909 Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition show about Seattle?

3. Why does Ross approve of the Pocock family's "monopoly?"

4. What did Muriel Draper, Lewis Mumford, and Harold Laski say about Seattle?

5. According to whom is Seattle an "outpost?" Why does Ross mention the Highlands and Broadmoor?

6. What ethnic influences does Ross mention?

7. Ross juxtaposes bustling military bases and Skid Road. To what effect?

8. Look up the references to the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), the Union Record, and the Seattle General Strike. Why might Ross assume these things are already known to the reader?

Mary Brinker Post, From Annie Jordan: A Novel of Seattle (fiction)

1. Identify descriptive language in the first passage about the harbor. How does Annie recognize the life of the harbor? What is the initial tone of this description?

2. What sorts of men work in the harbor area?

3. What does Annie like about the Old Curiosity Shop on Colman Dock? What kinds of things can one find there?

4. How do you interpret the statement that Annie never tired of looking at the exotic goods for sale, but never wanted to possess them?

5. How is Seattle's harbor a part of "the great world," from Annie's point of view?

Horace R. Cayton, From Long Old Road (nonfiction)

1. Of what significance is it that the writer was raised on Capitol Hill?

2. Who was Denny Blane?

3. What did Cayton's father do professionally?

4. How did the author respond to the emergence of greater racial prejudice during his youth?

5. Describe the dialogue between the police sergeant and the writer's father. How much is said or unsaid in this dialogue?

6. What advice does the father offer his son?

7. Why does the son decide to ship out to Alaska aboard the "Ketchikan?"

Mary McCarthy, From How I Grew (nonfiction)

1. How can Seattle and San Francisco initially be compared, according to McCarthy?

2. Of what significance are the Olympic Hotel, the Moore Theater, the Ladies Musical Club, and the Seattle Symphony for McCarthy? The Cornish School and the Pike Place Market?

3. When McCarthy says that she explored "by foot, streetcar, and cable car all the far-flung districts of Seattle," what do we learn implicitly about Seattle's geography and topography?

4. How does McCarthy describe the neighborhoods of Madrona, Mount Baker, Queen Anne Hill, Broadmoor, and the Highlands?

5. What is "Bohemia," and in what Seattle neighborhood does McCarthy locate it, in what had been a "good" neighborhood? Is this neighborhood bohemian today?

Betty MacDonald, From Anybody Can Do Anything (nonfiction)

1. What is the narrator selling on her first sales call to Mr. Hemp at the automobile company? What does she see on her way to meet him?

2. Why does the narrator observe the "men without hats and the girls without coats" so carefully?

3. How is the narrator received at the automobile company and at the collection agency? The La Charma Beauty School?

4. Compare the relative treatment of the Pike Place Market in McDonald's and McCarthy's essays. What explains the difference in emphasis between these two writers?

5. How does the narrator dilute the agony of her monotonous job?

Murray Morgan, From Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle (nonfiction)

1. Why do Seattle sidewalks have cleats? Are the hills in Seattle considered a problem or an attraction?

2. Morgan calls the Seattle area "a half-drowned mountain between Puget Sound and Lake Washington." Is this fair? How can one conceivably call Lake Washington, at sea level, a "mountain lake?"

3. Morgan describes businessmen in downtown Seattle--in a landscape that had formerly been full of Douglas fir and Western Red Cedar trees--gazing west upon the forest on the Olympic Peninsula. Does this description fit with Seattle's desire to be for Asia what New York is to Europe? Does the analogy seem to fit, given the Northwest's level of economic development?

4. What is the origin of the name for Alki Point? What are the names for the ships Morgan mentions? What makes these ships famous?

5. What is Skid Road, and how is it important for Seattle's history? What are the things "peculiar to Seattle's history," according to Morgan?

Monica Sone, From Nisei Daughter (nonfiction)

1. Where is the Carrollton Hotel located? What is the hotel's history?

2. When did the father buy the hotel? How did he and his wife rejuvenate it?

3. What are the father's criteria for admitting boarders?

4. What does the name Kazuko Monica mean?

5. What games did the children play in the hotel? How did the life there constitute a "world?"

6. To what effect does the author juxtapose the Salvation Army and the cratebox orator near the corner of Occidental and Washington Street?

7. What is the international district? Who are the hagu-jins?

John Okada, From No-No Boy (fiction)

1. Why does Ichiro tell himself that he might as well kill someone and go back to prison?

2. What is Eto Minato wearing, and why does this matter?

3. What is a "no-no boy?" Why doesn't Ichiro answer the question about this identity?

4. Why is Jackson Street important for Ichiro?

5. What is the reaction of the African-Americans to Ichiro in the Jackson Street pool hall?

6. Where is "home," for Ichiro?

Roger Sale, From Seattle, Past to Present (nonfiction)

1. What is the "uneasy note" writers usually offer about Seattle, according to Sale?

2. What kind of "progress" has the city fostered?

3. Who understands Seattle "best?"

4. What were the two major periods of expansion for the city, and how have people responded to this growth?

5. How is the newly created marsh near the University, one created by the lowering of Lake Union and Lake Washington resulting from the construction of the Hiram Chittenden Locks-complete with its canals and unfinished highway extensions--somehow "one of the finest things Seattle?"

Emmett Watson, From Digressions of a Native Son (nonfiction)

1. How big was Rudi Becker, by his own reckoning?

2. What kind of work did Becker do? What is Becker's idea of "fun?"

3. Why does Becker discourage honking horns on Ballard bridge? What is the point of his pranks?

4. What is the nature of the dialogue between Becker and the scientist on the waterfront?

5. How is Becker-and what he knows-"quintessentially Seattle?"

Richard Hugo, From The Real West Marginal Way: A Poet's Autobiography (nonfiction)

1. Where is West Marginal Way? The Riverside neighborhood?

2. What made Old John, the Greek fisherman, famous?

3. Why do the boys of Youngstown-Riverside and White Center feel "inferior to children of West Seattle?" What does Hugo mean when he writes "West Seattle was not a district," but an "ideal?"

4. What is the significance of the Duwamish Slough for Hugo? And Don Grouse-the second of Hugo's two "direct connections" to West Marginal Way?

5. How is it that, Hugo contends, in Seattle "the obvious flow" is north?

6. In what ways are Hugo and his writing, as he says, "tough?" How is this toughness related to West Marginal Way?

Essay Questions For Further Consideration of Part 1: Coming Into Focus (1930s - 1980s)

1. In what ways have geography and typography influenced the character of Seattle? Is Seattle "the farthest reach," or is it more properly seen as the gateway to this zone, more properly attributed to Alaska? American historians have hotly debated the usefulness of the term "frontier" as it can be employed to describe the American West. Does urban Seattle fit within conventional ideas about the "American frontier?"

2. Ross, Binns, and Morgan all refer to Puget Sound ferries as "streamlined." Why does this description of ferries frequently recur? What does this expression reveal about the perception of the technology of transportation in this area-and of the imagined pace of the city and its harbor?

3. Make a list of all of the neighborhoods these writers mention and describe. Which ones receive mention most often? Which neighborhoods seem to be overlooked in these writings? What explains the centrality or marginality of particular neighborhoods in narratives about Seattle? Does "centrality" correspond to geography, or to urban social arrangements of neighborhoods based on ethnicity or class?

4. In what ways is Seattle a haven for cultural diversity, according to these pieces? In what ways is it not?

5. Consider the diverse manners in which Ross, Morgan, and Herbst allude to and portray the Industrial Workers of the World and the 1919 Seattle General Strike, one of only two such strikes in U.S. history. How might this event be compared with the 2000 Seattle WTO protest? In another counterpoint, Sone refers to a left-wing cratebox orator on a street corner in the International District. Is Seattle more or less politicized than other American cities?

6. Select a description of a landscape or vista and compare it to one you know personally.

Part 2: Many Voices (1980s - 1990s)

1. Does Robbins mourn, or celebrate, the introduced, exotic blackberries that seem to grow more vigorously than even native mushrooms, ferns, and moss? How do blackberries initially set the tone of this fictional passage?

2. One dimension of this imaginative passage involves the idea that nature could well run rampant in the Seattle metropolis. Does this notion have any plausibility or particular attraction for the city? Is it gratuitous to imagine Seattle as "a vegetative utopia?"

3. For what is First Avenue known, according to Robbins?

4. To what effect does Robbins locate a princess character Leigh-Cheri among the Tattoo parlors and "three-dollar hotels" of First Avenue? Is the tattoo "born to lose" related to the setting in this passage?

5. In what way is the request that Leigh-Cheri tell a story for ten minutes-and not simply "talk about the rain on the . . . blackberries" appropriate for a novelistic passage about Seattle?

Earl W. Emerson, From The Rainy City (fiction)

1. Why does the narrator wait until after crossing southbound on the Montlake Bridge to try to lose his pursuer in the shark-gray Dodge?

2. Why is it difficult for a car to pass a bicycle on the road through the Arboreteum? How does the writer describe the road and its curbs?

3. Does the narrator see this motorist--who is bent on conflict with the bicyclist--as representative of all motorists?

4. Is Seattle known for such aggressive drivers and bicyclists?

Barbara Wilson, From Sisters of the Road: A Pam Nilsen Anthology (fiction)

1. How does Wilson describe the area of Pacific Highway South through Sea-Tac, the separate township where the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is located?

2. What is the condition of the narrator's Volvo? How does the state of the car becoming increasingly important by the end of the story?

3. What were the Green River murders?

4. What does the Denny's restaurant signify in this area south of Seattle?

5. How does the narrator's view of the young women change?

David Guterson, "Seattle's Son" (nonfiction)

1. What was Seattle like when Guterson was born there in 1956?

2. How old were New York and New Orleans when Seattle was founded in 1851?

3. Where did Guterson's parents and grandparents work?

4. How rural was north Seattle, where Guterson grew up, when he was a child?

5. What is Guterson's perspective on contemporary Seattle?

Timothy Egan, From The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (nonfiction)

1. How does the activity of kayaking shape the form of this narrative about the city and its environment?

2. Egan repeatedly contrasts human architectural structures with natural ones. Find examples. To what effect does he make these comparisons?

3. How does Egan "imagine" Captain George Vancouver in his relation to the land? Theodore Winthrop and Chief Seattle?

4. How does the historical fate of the east coast influence the Seattle area, as Egan describes it?

5. Where is Chief Seattle buried?

Jonathan Raban, From Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (nonfiction)

1. What is a "boomtown?"

2. What is Seattle's advantage in trade with Asia as compared to Los Angeles?

3. How does the Seattle Post-Intelligencer list Seattle neighborhoods in the real estate section?

4. What does Raban imply when he describes the young woman as presenting a "non-stop ten-minute advertisement for herself?" Does this self-presentation fit in with her search for housing in "a promised city?"

5. What do the woman from Colorado and the immigrant from Korea have in common?

6. How does Raban describe Seattle architecture?

David Shields, From Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (nonfiction)

1. What does Shield mean by saying that "the ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for the animal impulses?"

2. Why did the Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorialize against a parody of a murdered law professor's work? What does it suggest about Seattle that the Seattle Times editor must write an "interminable" column arguing that the use of a photo of Kurt Cobain's dead body was not sensationalistic?

4. What is psychologist Jennifer James's advice to women in Seattle, and why is this advice significant, for Shields?

5. How does the form of daily journal entries shape this narrative?

6. What are the "problematics of generalization?"

Charlotte Watson Sherman, From "Emerald City: Third & Pike," in Killing Color (fiction)

1. How would you describe the corner of Third and Pike?

2. What does Oya say about the history of her family? Who listens?

3. What draws the narrator into conversation with Oya?

4. How does Oya offend the narrator?

5. What made Oya famous? What is her dream?

Colette Brooks, From "Seattle and Vicinity" (nonfiction)

1. In what way does seeing a Seattle map "up close" or "from farther out" change the way one can view the city?

2. In what ways are lives like cities, according to Brooks?

3. How does the author imagine her mother in relation to particular locales in the city?

4. How does the author describe the Wallingford neighborhood? What makes this description tangible?

5. The attack in the alley changes the author's conception of place and personal relation to place. How?

Rebecca Brown, From "A Good Man," in Annie Oakley's Girl (fiction)

1. How does the initial impression of Jim contrast with his own report about his health when he calls for help?

2. What is Jim's attitude about his health and Swedish Hospital?

3. What is Jim's standard joke with the narrator?

4. Why does it matter that the narrator "can't tell stories the way Jim can?" Does it mean that this story about Jim is somehow lesser in stature than the subject of the story-Jim himself?

5. Why is the reference to Scotty important?

6. What is the history between the narrator and Jim? Why does Jim call them "Tonto" and "The Lone Ranger?"

J.A. Jance, From Lying in Wait (fiction)

1. Does the narrator identify with Hemingway and his novels? What is "stream-of-consciousness interference?"

2. What happened to the narrator's last two partners? Is he happy to have Sue Danielson as a partner?

3. How did the evidence of the murder surface?

4. What is the narrator's advice to Danielson about her twelve-year-old son? How does Danielson return the favor?

5. Where is Fisherman's Terminal?

Walt Crowley, From Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (nonfiction)

1. What did Crowley think of the city when he arrived at the age of fourteen? What was Jane Addams Junior High School like?

2. What did the new Seattle branch of the Congress of Racial Equality do? What or who was their model? Why was it significant that Wing Luke was elected to the Seattle City Council?

3. What did Crowley think of the Seattle World's Fair in 1962? How did the fair salve "Seattle's chronic inferiority complex?"

4. What is Metro and when was it first proposed? How did Interstate-5 get its lid?

5. Who were the "Fringies" on University Way-"the Ave?"

Jack Cady, From Street (fiction)

1. How is the weather described?

2. How is Puget Sound a "dark void?"

3. How are the mountains and the city contrasted? What significance is the Native American presence in the description?

4. What makes the city hum?

5. To what effect are freeway traffic and the Western Flyway contrasted?

Thom Jones, From "Cold Snap," in Cold Snap: Stories (fiction)

1. What makes houses on the West Coast less than "real," according to the narrator?

2. What precipitated the narrator's departure from Africa? What was he doing there?

3. How does Cady build suspense leading to the accidental injury of the narrator's thumb? Does this incident enlarge the narrative? How does it influence the development of the plot, if there is a plot in this story?

4. How would you describe the narrator?

5. What is the "Van Gogh effect?"

6. What is the narrator's relationship to his sister Susan? What was Susan's dream?

Charles D'Ambrosio, From "American Bullfrog," in The Point (fiction)

1. What did Regimbal's father teach the characters to do with food stamps?

2. To what does the narrator compare Boeing airplanes?

3. What might be the characters' age? Why do they get kicked out of the store?

4. What changes are taking place in the neighborhood?

5. What happens to the characters in Volunteer Park?

Sherman Alexie, From Indian Killer (fiction)

1. How does John characterize Pioneer Square and other parts of downtown Seattle? What does he think?

2. How do people in downtown regard John?

3. Unless one knows the Burke-Gilman trail and the university district, it is easy to assume that a "field" in this area could be seen as "wilderness," as John momentarily imagines it. What is the author's purpose in suggesting this particular illusion?

4. How do John and Marie meet?

5. When do John and Marie meet again? How do the locations of their meetings guide influence their relationship?

Natalia Rachel Singer, From "Blurred Vision: How the Eighties Began in One American Household" (nonfiction)

1. How should one define a decade, according to Singer?

2. What kind of people frequent the collectively owned café Cause Célèbre? Is the author's retrospective an ironic one?

3. What is there in Seattle that the narrator hopes to find, given that she did not find it at Northwestern University?

4. What is the relationship between Claudia and Philip?

5. Does the social world the author describes pertain more to the decade or to life in Seattle?

6. What does the author mean by the last sentence?

Peter Bacho, From "Dark Blue Suit," in Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories (fiction)

1. Who are the Pinoys? Alaskeros?

2. What is the history of Filipino unions in Seattle?

3. What does the narrator's father do? What is his "look?"

4. Why does the father refuse the gift to his son?

5. Of what importance are family and friends in the Filipino community?

Essay Questions For Further Consideration of Part 2: Many Voices (1980s - 1990s)

1. Compare the ways that various writers have described Seattle weather. Does a consistent picture emerge, or does weather function largely as a means of setting the tone in fiction and nonfiction?

2. Similarly to the question above, compare the ways that various writers have described Seattle traffic. Does a consistent picture emerge, or does traffic function very differently in fiction and nonfiction?

3. What social divisions and differences recur in the writings in this section? What social groups are antagonists? Are these differences profound, or does Seattle seem to be largely a pacific, conciliatory city devoted to unity? Does Seattle's diversity make it difficult to generalize about the culture of the city, as some authors have done, or is it relatively easy to make such generalizations?

4. Consider how writers of fiction and nonfiction develop point of view. What are the advantages of each mode of writing? Disadvantages?

5. Compare parallel personal relationships in these writings. How do personal relationships reveal generalizations about an ethnic group or about Seattle's urban culture?

6. Select a description of a Seattle neighborhood and compare it to your own.

Part 3: Unto Itself (1990s - early 2000s)

1. Why does Andie accept money from Bella?

2. What distinguishes Maggie as a character?

3. How are the front hall of Maggie's house and the inside of Andie's suitcase described?

4. Why are the newsreels showing at the Neptune Theater upsetting to Andie?

5. If the university district could be seen as the "northern edge" of the city, in what era did Andie visit her aunt? How has the city changed by the time that she returns at the age of fifty-five?

Emily Baillargeon Russin, From "Seattle Now: A Letter" (nonfiction)

1. Why did Russin leave Seattle for the east coast?

2. What happened to Seattle when Russin was living on the other side of the country in the early 1990s?

3. Why do people move to Seattle, and how well are they received?

4. How has Microsoft, and Paul Allen and Bill Gates, changed the Seattle area? Where is Redmond?

5. How closely is Jimi Hendrix associated with Seattle?

Matthew Sadler, From Allan Stein (fiction)

1. Why does the narrator arise early?

2. What happens to his imagined address to a friend scribbled on newspaper? How might the dissipation and loss of this address be compared to what happens to astronauts' urine in space when released into the void?

3. How is the narrator treated by colleagues when he takes his leave of absence?

4. Describe the relationship between the narrator and Herbert, his adjacent neighbor.

5. How is the city a "is a virtual monument to indiscriminate nostalgia?"

6. What compromises the buildings' "grand theatricality?"

Matt Briggs, From "Sleep Dummy," in The Remains of the River Names (fiction)

1. Based on what the narrator says of the Hopper painting, what about Nathan as he is first seen could be regarded as an appropriate subject for a Hopper painting?

2. Why did the narrator drop out of college?

3. What kind of life does the narrator live?

4. Why does Nathan regard Hopper paintings as clichés?

5. What are they not saying?

Paisley Rekdal, Adapted from "Breaking In" (nonfiction)

1. How does the family imagine the burglary of their house?

2. What is it about being burglarized while sleeping that seems sexual?

3. Why is the father embarrassed by the burglary?

4. What is the mother's attitude about her daughter's dates?

5. What happens in Discovery Park?

6. Was the protagonist "a good kid," as the father says?

Lynda Barry, From Cruddy (fiction)

1. How does the trumpeter in the "unhappy" city of Dentsville play?

2. What are the sailors like?

3. How is the doughnut shop described?

4. Is it obvious from the writing that Barry is a cartoonist? Are these characters caricatures?

5. Is the description of the waterfront, with its flotsam on the Sound, outdoor chowder stands, and curiosity shops an appealing one?

Edwin Weihe, From "Green Lake," in Another Life and Other Stories (fiction)

1. What kind of accident destined the narrator to a life of reading?

2. How does Rosanna reveal herself in the mirror? Is this parital act of self-revelation pertinent to Nancy's description of Rosanna as someone elusive?

3. Why does the protagonist wear "a decent pair of Oxfords?"

4. What does he see on the street as a result of his handicap? What stories do street items tell?

5. Who were Nausikaa and her maids? What relevance do they have to this story about Green Lake?

Mark Lindquist, From Never Mind Nirvana (fiction)

1. What is intriguing about Carol's paintings, according to Pete's point of view?

2. What is meant by incumbency, a political term, in the way that Pete imagines it? Why is he willing to take on an "incumbent?"

3. What is notable about the Pike Place Market area in this story?

4. How are the advertisements in The Stranger parallel to what goes on in the story?

5. Why is the T-shirt Peter sees inappropriate?

6. Does this story have a happy ending?

Neil Henry, From Pearl's Secret: A Black Man's Search for His White Family (nonfiction)

1. What is meant by the phrase, "even in Seattle," when Neil Henry discusses segregation in the 1950s? In what neighborhood did African-Americans live?

2. How did Henry's parents buy property in a white neighborhood? What was the response of the neighborhood?

3. What are Henry's feelings about growing up on Lakeshore Drive?

4. What made Henry's parents choose Seattle as a place to live?

5. How did Seattle change?

Lydia Minatoya, From The Strangeness of Beauty (fiction)

1. How is "Rainier-san" like a "facetious Fujiyama?"

2. Where is Nihonmachi, Seattle's Japantown?

3. How do Akira and Naomi view their neighborhood. Why might their attitudes differ?

4. What is the best way to the Pike Place Market from Japantown?

5. Where do they go matsutake mushrooming?

6. What was the Washington State Alien Land Law of 1921? What were its consequences?

Essay Questions For Further Consideration of Part 3: Unto Itself (1990s - early 2000s)

1. Compare and contrast the views of Guterson, Russin, and Henry, Seattle natives. How do they regard changes in Seattle over time?

2. In light of the temporal progression of the three sections, do particular neighborhoods become more or less visibly important in these writings? Are the boundaries sharper, or not?

3. Is contemporary Seattle more "unto itself" than historic Seattle? Is the city turning inward or outward? Give examples to illustrate your point of view.

4. How do contemporary retrospective and historical views of Seattle compare with the oldest Seattle writings appearing in the first section? Which is more accurate, contemporary reporting, or historic retrospection?

5. Does Seattle seem to be largely a city in a remote part of the United States, or is it rather an important gateway to Alaska, Asia, and the Philippines?

6. Write a short description of a city that does not exist in reality in a way that reflects on some of the concerns of writers you have read in this collection.