Patchwork Girl by Mary/Shelley & Herself by Shelley Jackson

What was your experience of reading this text like? Did you enjoy it? Did it frustrate you? Explain why.
How do the varying sections of the work differ?

Are there parts of the text that you feel do not belong?
How do the images and text interact?

What characterizes this kind of fiction? How is it similar to or different from other types of fiction (like novel, poetry, drama, film, etc.)?

How might your experience of this text be different than that of others?

When do you choose to end your reading of the work?

In a portion of the text we have a female creature created by Mary Shelley herself.

How is this creature different from the male creature in Frankenstein?

What is the female creature's relationship to Mary Shelley's novel? To the male creature in the novel? To the aborted female creature?

Does this creature have a name?

How does the creature relate to Mary Shelley?

What relationship is implied between creation in text and creation in flesh?

Is this Patchwork Girl a monster?

What makes a monster?

What us the significance of the body parts that comprise the female creature?

Who are the various women, men, and animals that create her being? In what way is she conscious of them?

Consider Agatha, Jennifer, Bossie, Bronwyn, etc. Who were they? Do they have a kind of continued existence?

How does the creature make a coherent self out of these patchwork pieces?

What does Mary Shelley contribute?

Why does the creature leave Mary Shelley? Where does she go?

What is her experience on the ship like? How do the other passengers relate to her?

How do she and Chancy come together? What do they share? What is the limitation of their relationship?

Does the Patchwork Girl have something in common with the former sideshow performer she meets? With the armadillo she keeps as a pet?

How does her relationship with Chancy end?

Where does she go?

Who is Elsie? Why is she particularly important?

Does the Patchwork Girl's story end? Are we given more than one possible ending? Which one do you believe, if either?

Another section of this work concerns itself, in part, with another kind of patchwork girl. How is she different from Mary Shelley's female creature?

How do you navigate this story?

This story is made up of pieces from other stories, novels, articles and essays (most noticeably L. Frank Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz and Frankenstein, but also more than a dozen others). How do you read this patchwork text? What do you make of it?

How is combining texts like this similar to or different from sewing a quilt, making a creature out of parts, or creating an identity?

Sections of this text seem to be designed to make you consider yourself as somewhat patchwork. Do you accept this reading or not?

How are you connected to the people you used to be (as a baby, as a child, before that last big break-up)? How are you distinct and separate from them?

How are you connected to those people (friends, family members, random strangers) who have influenced the person you have become? Are they pieces that make you up?

How do you "put yourself back together" after a traumatic experience?

Do you find scar tissue (both real and metaphoric) stronger or weaker than one's original skin? More or less sensitive?

What would you say are the primary themes of this text?

How do you come to them?

“A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway

What characterizes a cyborg?

Do the parts ever add up to a whole?

What makes the image of the cyborg powerful?

Is this a positive or negative image?

What is at stake in the fusion of organism and machine?

What do cyborgs need or want? What do they disdain?

How are cyborgs implicated in the separation of man and machine, human and animal, man and woman, physical and non-physical?

How does the cyborg respond to border and boundary crossings?

Can you think of any examples of cyborgs (in Haraway's sense) from literature, film, or television?

Is the creature from Frankenstein a cyborg or not? Why or why not?

Is the Patchwork Girl (which one!) a cyborg?

Haraway claims that she is setting forth an "ironic political myth" in the shape of the cyborg. What does she want the cyborg to do? How is the image of the cyborg useful?

What does the cyborg offer to feminism?

How is affinity crucial?

How does the cyborg rewrite the myth of the fall? What might this mean?

What does it mean not to come from the Garden (both on a literal and metaphoric level)?

Does the cyborg represent a utopian or a dystopian future?

Would you consider yourself a cyborg?

What makes you a cyborg or not?

Would you like to be a cyborg?