Discussion Guide for Candy Don't Come in Gray
1. “You got the right to be. If God didn’t want you to exist, he wouldn’ta made you. Why you gotta look to somebody else to give you permission to exist?” Louisa seems to have the easy answer to Mattie’s disappearance dilemma, but Mattie isn’t so sure. Do you think she was crazy? What did the concept of existence mean to her, and why was she incapable of looking to herself for proof of her own existence?
2. Jonah was swallowed up by the Evers family and then spat out after Dominic’s death, much like his Biblical namesake. Why do you think he was so slow to act in order to save himself? Shouldn’t he have realised that he was part of a society that merely tolerated rather than accepted him? Couldn’t he have asserted himself earlier? Why didn’t he do something about Justice long before he made his first attempt?
3. Do you think that part of Faith’s hostility toward Jonah stemmed from a subconscious recognition that to Justice, he was merely a stand-in for and a conduit to Dominic? Did she see her daughter as competition for her husband’s affections?
4. Why do you think Mattie is finally able to call her grandmother “Grandma” instead of the more public “Auntie Lou”? Do you think this stems from a shift in her concept of family? Like the author’s previous novels, A Thirst for Rain and Every Bitter Thing Sweet, Candy Don’t Come in Gray is about the individual’s sense of self in the context of family. Where should one end and the other begin?
5. Were they all like pigs, ignoring the fragrant flowers that grew above ground, to root and snuffle at the grubs and rotting vegetation that lay below it? Do you agree with Faith, that men usually have affairs out of their class? If so, why? Still on the subject of class, do you think that Jonah was ill-equipped to handle many of his social problems because of his origins? In other words, did Dominic have certain social sensibilities and capabilities bred into him over the generations, which Jonah lacked? Is upward mobility absolute, or does heredity play a part in life’s success?
6. Do you think that Jonah would have been perfectly content to keep Mattie as a mistress, much as Dominic had kept her mother before? Do you believe that habits, situations, curses and blessings cycle through the generations, and that he would eventually have followed Dominic’s well-worn path?
7. Jonah had access to many means of transport at the Evers house, and yet he loved that bike. What did it mean to him? What did Mattie’s home and her grandmother symbolize for him? Why wasn’t he afraid to be recognized when he was out riding with Mattie every afternoon? After all, he is a fairly well known businessman. Do you think he was trying to precipitate a situation within a marriage in which he no longer felt loved?
8. Why was Blood Pye so easily able to give Mattie up? Was he serious about her in the first place? And what do you think will happen between him and Faith? Are his interests romantic or merely mercenary? True, he is after her financial backing in order to save his business, but he did bring her flowers….
9. What is this deep resentment—and later fascination and dependence—that Faith feels for her statue? Does she see in it reminders of African qualities that she hates to acknowledge in herself and her husband? If so, why does she seek out these qualities after Dominic is gone?
10. Was Dominic the monster that Mattie later saw him to be? Was he really manipulative, cold-blooded and selfish? Or was he just a man straddling two words, and trying to stay happy in both?
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