The Sparrow

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

Christopher Columbus’s legacy has become increasingly fraught with controversy as more critical voices, some from among the Indigenous community, have spoken out about the fallacy of “discovery.” Describe the debate over Columbus and explain specifically what each side of this debate argues.

Teaching Suggestion: When Russell began researching The Sparrow, 1992 marked the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The author took inspiration from the debate over Columbus’s legacy when writing The Sparrow, wondering if the Jesuits could have understood the effects of their interventions on Indigenous peoples and communities. Instead of setting this investigation in the past, she reframed it as a futuristic novel in which a crew—led by a Jesuit priest—encountered an entirely new race of beings on a distant planet. Helping students to understand that Columbus’s legacy of colonization (and its devastating effect on Indigenous nations) was and is a contentious subject will help to lay a foundation for this novel. If students have little background or knowledge on the topic, they might work in pairs to briefly research each side of the debate, then share and compare learned content.