Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

What impact does anonymity have on the Dear Sugar column? In what way does it facilitate interpersonal connection, both between advice columnist and correspondent and the Dear Sugar readership at large? You should focus on at least two columns in your answer.

Using at least two columns, explore to what extent Sugar manages to steer clear of identity politics in her responses to those writing to her. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?

What is radical empathy, and how does it affect Cheryl Strayed’s endeavor in Dear Sugar? What role does it play in helping the person and entertaining the reader at the same time? How does it compare to the approaches of advice columns from earlier eras, such as Dear Abby? You should refer to at least two columns in your answer.

To what extent is Dear Sugar a literary rather than therapeutic endeavor? What cultural anxieties about the genre of self-help and advice columns does Steve Almond’s introduction seek to address? You should refer to at least three columns in your answer and address the literary techniques that Strayed uses.

How does the motif of loss affect Sugar and her correspondents? How does Sugar show that some form of loss is inevitable in any significant life transition? Has her understanding of loss changed in the intervening decade between Parts 1 through 5 and Part 6? You should refer to at least three columns in your answer.

How does Sugar employ tough love to address people’s problems? How does she show that being wrong and in a position to remedy your errors is an empowering position? You should refer to at least two columns in your answer.

What role do small objects, gestures, and events play in Tiny Beautiful Things? How does Strayed show that these can be more transformative and meaningful than large-scale phenomena?

What role did Strayed’s parents play in her life, and how is this reflected in the columns? How do memories of her mother and father affect her advice to correspondents?