Properties of Thirst

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

1. Sunny is connected to her family by food. What are the things that connect you to your family? Do you have any hobbies or common practices that remind you of your membership in a larger collective?

2. How did you feel about the novel’s portrayal of discrimination against Japanese Americans during World War II? What factors do you think drive this kind of bias, particularly in a wartime setting?

3. How might you handle an instruction that you feel is morally objectionable? Consider Schiff’s experience at Manzanar. How do you feel about his small acts of resistance to the task at hand?

4. Rocky, Cas, and Schiff reckon with familial expectations regarding the direction of their lives. What sort of expectations did your family have for your life? Did you follow that direction or did you find ways to carve your own path?

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

1. Japanese American concentration camps have been covered in other books, like They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. How does Wiggins’s novel frame the Japanese American concentration camp as a historical event? Does it interrogate its moral repercussions? How does it represent the perspectives of those who were directly affected by the event?

2. Compare and contrast the impact between the California water wars and the Japanese American concentration camp at Manzanar. How does the novel enable this comparison? What are the forces that dictate these social conditions? Who are the people most affected by these social conditions?

3. How do the California water wars hint at the larger issues of climate change and resource allocation? Consider this in line with Rocky’s quest to underline the adverse effects of this conflict.

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

1. Discuss the symbolic role that food plays in developing the relationships throughout the novel. 

2. What purpose does the ambiguity around the fate of Stryker serve throughout the early parts of the novel? Consider the ways the different characters react to it and how this opens opportunities to delve into backstory.

3. Analyze the chapter titles with respect to the novel’s larger themes. What could “thirst” mean in the context of the American Dream? How do this and other titles describe the ecosystem in which the novel’s characters live and engage with one another?

4. Discuss the dynamic between Stryker and Rocky. How do Rocky’s character qualities resonate with Stryker’s? How does the fear around Stryker’s fate tie in with the grief of losing Lou? How does this relate to Rocky’s notions of property and precariousness in the California water wars?