Thirteen-year-old Joey Willis is used to being left out of conversations. Though she's been deaf since the age of six, Joey's mother has never allowed her to learn sign language. She strains to read the lips of those around her, but often fails.
Everything changes when Joey meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimpanzee, Sukari. Her new friends use sign language to communicate, and Joey secretly begins to learn to sign. Spending time with Charlie and Sukari, Joey has never been happier. She even starts making friends at school for the first time. But as Joey's world blooms with possibilities, Charlie's and Sukari's choices begin to narrow—until Sukari's very survival is in doubt.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Thirteen-year-old Joey Willis is used to being left out of conversations. Though she's been deaf since the age of six, Joey's mother has never allowed her to learn sign language. She strains to read the lips of those around her, but often fails.
Everything changes when Joey meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimpanzee, Sukari. Her new friends use sign language to communicate, and Joey secretly begins to learn to sign. Spending time with Charlie and Sukari, Joey has never been happier. She even starts making friends at school for the first time. But as Joey's world blooms with possibilities, Charlie's and Sukari's choices begin to narrow—until Sukari's very survival is in doubt.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Overview
Thirteen-year-old Joey Willis is used to being left out of conversations. Though she's been deaf since the age of six, Joey's mother has never allowed her to learn sign language. She strains to read the lips of those around her, but often fails.
Everything changes when Joey meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimpanzee, Sukari. Her new friends use sign language to communicate, and Joey secretly begins to learn to sign. Spending time with Charlie and Sukari, Joey has never been happier. She even starts making friends at school for the first time. But as Joey's world blooms with possibilities, Charlie's and Sukari's choices begin to narrow—until Sukari's very survival is in doubt.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429909372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tom Doherty Associates |
| Publication date: | 07/31/2007 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 407 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Ginny Rorby holds an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Miami and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Her young adult novel, Dolphin Sky, was nominated for the Keystone Reading Award. Ginny Rorby is also co-director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, now in its 15th year. She lives in Fort Bragg, California.
GINNY RORBY was raised in Winter Park, Florida, and lived in Miami during her career as a Pan American flight attendant. Midway through that career, she enrolled in the University of Miami to pursue an undergraduate degree in biology, graduated and changed direction again. She went on to receive an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She now lives on the chilly coast of northern California with her parrot and way too many cats. Ginny Rorby is co-director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.
Read an Excerpt
Hurt Go Happy
By Ginny Rorby
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2006 Ginny RorbyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0937-2
CHAPTER 1
February 1991
Fort Bragg, California
The vibration of someone moving through the house woke Joey. She opened her eyes with a start, her heart racing. The room was pitch black, but it was getting light outside. She could see the dim outline of the deck beyond her sliding glass doors and the redwood tree that grew beside it. It's just Ray. Her heart slowed.
The blank face of her digital clock showed that the electricity was still out from the storm of five days before. Even Joey, who was nearly as deaf as a post, had heard the explosion of the transformer on the pole in the yard that made her mother flinch and her brother clap his hands over his ears a moment before the lights went out.
They weren't alone; the winds had gusted to eighty-five miles an hour, knocking the power out along the entire coast, and they were sealed off. A mudslide to the north had covered the route to Leggett, and the Navarro River was out of its banks and over the south road to Cloverdale. Downed trees blocked the other three coast-to-inland roads. Only someone like her stepfather Ray, with a knowledge of the web of logging roads that lay across the mountains, could have gotten in or out.
With the pattern of getting up for school broken, Joey couldn't remember what day it was. Wednesday, she thought. No. It's Thursday. Last night they'd gone to Fort Bragg for their first good meal in days. All the meat in Safeway's freezer had defrosted, but instead of pitching it, the employees barbecued every scrap and invited the town. She still felt full, smiled, and wondered vaguely why Ray was up so early — a logging-truck driver with no logs to haul — before she rolled over and went back to sleep.
When she woke again it was light. She turned to look out the sliding glass doors beside her bed and brought her hand from beneath the covers to brush her hair from her eyes. Her left thumb was damp and wrinkled. It had been so long since she'd awakened to find her thumb wet that she'd lulled herself into thinking she'd finally outgrown sucking it. She grabbed it with her right hand and squeezed it over and over like a sponge.
For the first time in five days, sunlight slanted through the trees along the trail behind the house, though raindrops still clung to the redwood leaves, sparkling like Christmas lights. She lay and watched them, waiting for the wrinkles in her thumb to disappear so her mother wouldn't know she had started again. She tried to remember what she'd dreamed that had made her anxious. That's what the county psychologist had told her to do. Face her fears. Don't let them burrow in.
A breeze brushed the redwood leaves but the raindrops held on. She imagined herself as small as a drop of water falling from the sky, thinking herself a goner only to be saved at the last moment by a spiky green finger. She stared at one drop in particular, as if guarding it, until a rougher breeze knocked it loose to shatter on the deck.
Joey examined her thumb. It was nearly back to normal. Why do I do this? she wondered again. I'm safe — in my own room. Her own room. Since his birth, she'd shared the front bedroom with Luke. Then, four months ago, the builders had finished the second-story addition and Ray and her mother moved upstairs. Their old room, with its view of the creek and the forested canyon, became hers.
Before she'd lost her hearing, she'd loved the whisper of wind through pines, and since she had no way of knowing how different it sounded in a redwood forest, the sight of branches swaying re-created that sound in her mind. Even after six and a half years of deafness, she sometimes awoke expecting her hearing to have returned, like her sight, with the dawn.
Joey wasn't totally deaf. The doctors had told her mother that she'd lost about 70 percent of her hearing, leaving her able to hear lawn mowers, chainsaws, horns honking, sirens, her brother's wails when he was hungry and his shrieks when he was hurt. All other sounds were lost. Still, over the years, she'd gotten used to the silence, and liked it in many ways. She did miss the quiet rhythm of normal conversation, birds singing, and music. Listening with her eyes always reminded her of Smiley, the nickname she'd given her nurse in the hospital because of the yellow smiley-face button she wore. On the day Joey's mother told her she was deaf, Smiley had made it seem like a gift, promising Joey that she would always keep the memory of certain sounds — phantoms, she called them — like her mother's voice, rain, and the wind through pines. Smiley said she could attach those remembered sounds to whatever she pleased, even to silent things like leaves falling and butterflies.
She lay for a while with her thumb jammed into her fist and watched the music of the tree limbs swaying until she was jolted by the slamming of the door to the bedroom she used to share with her brother. The house would soon shudder and tremble with the energy of a two-and-a-half-year-old.
Joey stretched and yawned, pulled the covers to her chin, and hugged herself. The air in her room was frigid because she never used the heater, even when the power was on. She hated the feel and smell of electric heat. She preferred socks, long-johns, and piles of warm blankets no matter how cold it got. Unheated air helped her fight down the memory of rusting, over-heated trailers or bare-bones apartments sweltering in the middle of winter.
Though she liked to sleep in a cold room, she didn't like getting up in one. She scooted out of bed, jerked the spread up to cover the pillows, then darted into the woodstove-warmed hall with her shoulders hunched and her hands clamped in her armpits. She glanced down to see if the light was on in the bathroom, then remembered the power was out and opened the door slowly, in case someone was there. A candle burned in the wall-mounted candleholder her mother had bought the last time the power went out.
"Hi," she said, when she came into the kitchen from brushing her teeth with bottled water.
Her mother turned from the little two-burner Coleman stove and smiled.
"Where's Luke?" Joey asked, then watched her lips.
"Outside peeing on the roses."
"How come?"
"Ray told him it keeps the deer from eating the garden. As soon as you went into the bathroom, he grabbed his crotch and ran outside."
Joey laughed. "Is that true about the deer?"
Her mother shrugged. "Who knows?"
"Is the power still out in town?"
Ruth nodded. "Except what's on the mill's circuit, the hospital, and the harbor."
"Where'd Ray go?"
"Up there somewhere," her mother said, pointing with the spatula in the direction of the hill behind their house, "splitting firewood. Pancakes?"
"Yes, please." Joey caught Luke's arm as he came in and kissed the top of his curly blond head.
"Ick," he shouted, giggling and squirming to free himself.
"But I love kissing you," Joey crooned and swung him off the ground to smooch the back of his neck.
When she put him down he whirled and stomped his foot. "No kisses," he hollered.
Joey pretended to get the urge again and chased him a few times around the sofa.
Her mother waved to catch her attention. "Will you get ---------- outside to ---------- toilet with?" her mother asked, but mid-sentence she had looked down to check the underside of the pancake she was cooking.
"What?" Joey said.
Ruth faced her. "Sorry. Will you get a bucket of water from the barrel outside to flush the toilet with? And finish helping Luke dress, okay?"
"Are you going somewhere?" Joey asked.
"I told you. The radio said the power's on in the harbor. I'm going to work." She flipped the pancake. "Could get busy."
Her mother had been a waitress at the Old Dock Café in Noyo Harbor for nearly six years. In spite of having met Ray during her second week on the job and marrying him six months later, she wouldn't quit. Joey's stepfather drove a logging truck for Georgia-Pacific, which had a big mill in town. It was a pretty good job, though there was always the threat that he'd get injured again or laid off. Her mother used that as an excuse to keep working, but Joey knew it was because having a job, any job, was her mother's safety net. She would never risk another four months like their first four months in Fort Bragg.
When they arrived from Reno six and a half years ago, the job she'd been promised was gone. The money they'd saved, hidden in the belly of Joey's teddy bear, bought them a month in a cheap motel on a back street in the center of town. It ran out three months before the owner of the Old Dock Café took pity and gave her a job. For that length of time, they had lived in their car, eaten one meal a day of handouts from local restaurants, and depended, for their safety, on the community of other homeless people. Her mother had sworn then that nothing short of losing both legs would get her to quit the job that had seemed like a miracle then.
Eating meals cooked on a Coleman stove reminded Joey of those days, but she smiled when her mother slid a huge pancake onto a plate and handed it to her. Joey got a knife and fork out of the drawer and the carton of milk from the ice chest in the middle of the kitchen floor. What was left of the perishables from the refrigerator were on ice in the cooler.
Her mother waved again for her attention. "Pretty day," she said. "What are your plans?"
Joey shrugged. "I don't have any. Want me to watch Luke?"
"I don't think so," her mother said.
Joey didn't bother to watch her answer. She knew what her mother would say. She'd never let her babysit. Not for a quick run to the store, not even last winter when paramedics took her to the hospital for stitches after she missed the kindling she was splitting and drove the ax through her shoe. She'd called a neighbor to watch him then had waited, bleeding and in pain, for the ten minutes it took the woman to get there before dialing 911.
It seemed to Joey that her mother treated her as if she'd stopped aging when she stopped hearing. "Do you think I might lose him or something?"
"I don't want to talk about it. You know why."
"Yeah. Right." Too young, instead of the truth — too deaf. Joey accepted a second pancake. "Maybe I'll ride my bike to the beach." Knowing what her mother would say to that idea, she drew a happy face on the pancake with syrup to miss her objections, but looked up too soon and saw, "---------- sea is too rough."
The rough sea was why she wanted to go. She'd never heard the sound of the ocean and she thought it might be loud enough today.
Ruth tapped her shoulder. "Did you hear me? I said I'd rather you not ride your bike today. There may still be lines down and the sea is too rough."
"Mom, I'm thirteen and a half. I won't cross a downed line and I won't go too near the water."
"No bike. No beach," her mother said. "How about looking for mushrooms for me?" Joey gave up with a shrug. "To eat or for dye?"
Her mother boiled certain mushrooms to make a dye for wool with which she knitted sweaters, caps, and scarves.
"Both would be nice. There should be pine spikes on the hill and oyster mushrooms on that old alder by the creek."
Joey only nodded. Her mother had taken a mushroom-identification class at the college two years before. The two of them had gone hunting after every rain that winter until she had taught Joey nearly everything she'd learned. They'd even made money selling oyster mushrooms and chanterelles, enough to buy Joey a used bike, which, to this point, she'd been allowed to ride only on the logging trails in the state forest across the road from their house.
While her mother dressed for work, Joey gave some thought to ignoring her this time and riding to the beach anyway, but after Ruth left, she chickened out. Even if nothing happened, she wasn't good at deceiving her mother. The link between them had grown intuitive. If she went, Ruth would know.
Joey did the breakfast dishes with rainwater from the barrel outside the kitchen door, then added an old sweater of Ray's over her sweatshirt and a waterproof jacket from the drying hook near the woodstove. She found a trowel and a big basket in the storeroom, and from the pantry she got a stack of wax paper sandwich bags to keep the dye mushrooms, which could make you sick, separate from the mushrooms they would eat.
Just outside the front door, Joey slipped into Ray's rubber boots, then headed across the yard and down the hill to the creek. A chain girdled the bent trunk of an old tan oak tree. In summer, a rope chair-swing hung there. This was a favorite spot of Joey's. She would sit for hours and watch the birds flitting through the woods and listen with her eyes to the little waterfall. If she took a book, she could completely lose herself in its pages, then look at the waterfall and the leaves trembling in a breeze and fill her sight with sound. She loved that about being deaf; Smiley had been right, that was its gift.
Joey stopped beneath the tan oak to watch the silty, butterscotch-pudding-colored water tumble over the rocks as if it were on the boil. The creek was still high from the storm, too swollen to cross. She walked the high bank instead, scanning the thick brush for chanterelles, her personal favorite.
Joey found the alder but someone had gotten there before her. Only a few very small oyster mushrooms were left, and they were turning brown and beginning to melt. This was the thing Joey didn't like about mushrooms. They didn't die like anything else. They filled with maggots while they still looked fresh, then darkened and liquefied like something from an old horror movie, finally leaving a black tarry spot.
A yard past the alder she spotted a Pacific giant salamander as long as her foot, eating a bright yellow banana slug. She squatted down to watch, imagining first what it would be like to be the slug sliding into darkness, then she nearly made herself sick by considering the role of the salamander. She got up and stepped over them.
The storm had blown several trees down across the trail along the creek and it had become overgrown since the beginning of the rainy season in November. She climbed over and under, searching the duff cautiously for lumps that hinted at a fresh, new mushroom coming up.
Ray loved beefsteak mushrooms, not because they tasted very good but because they cooked up to look exactly like bloody, raw, well-marbled beef. He and Luke liked to act pukey, letting strips of the bloody red fungus dangle from their forks, smacking their lips. When Joey found a beautiful fresh one at the base of a fir, she thought it would be her prize of the day, but later she found herself on an unfamiliar section of the trail, farther than she had wandered before. There, spanning the creek, was another downed alder covered with satiny white oyster mushrooms.
Joey took a wax-paper bag and left her basket on the redwood duff. She climbed down the slight incline past the broken base of the alder and collected the largest of the mushrooms. When that bag was full, she got another and waded nearly midstream to reach the ones along the center of the log.
It was when she turned back with the second bag full that she saw the old man. She froze, her heart pounding. He had her basket and he was very mad.
Joey gulped to keep a scream from escaping. Angry faces terrified her and his was red to the point of bursting. He was yelling at her, making it hard to read the furious flurry of words. He reached in the basket, grabbed the beefsteak mushroom, and shook it at her. "Thief," he said. She caught that word because the tongue whips out like a snake's with words that begin with "th."
Instinctively, she took a step backward. The creek flowed over the rim of her boot and filled it with icy water. She was trapped now, unable to run if she had to.
He must have seen that he was scaring her, because he calmed down a little and put the beefsteak mushroom back in the basket. "You're trespassing," he said, shaking a gnarly finger at her. "I'm sick ---------- people ---------- mushrooms."
"What did you say?" she stammered, though it was clear enough since he'd called her a thief. People were very territorial about the mushrooms on their property.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby. Copyright © 2006 Ginny Rorby. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 7.2px 0.0px; font: 19.0px 'Akzidenz-Grotesk BQ'} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 7.2px 0.0px; font: 10.0px 'Akzidenz-Grotesk BQ'} RESEARCH & WRITING PROJECTS
The research and writing activities below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: (RL.5-8.4) (RL.5-6.5) (RL.6-8.6) (RL.5-8.7) (RL.9-10.4, 11-12.4); (W.5-8.2-3) (W.8.7-8) (W.9-10.2-3, 11-12.2.3) (W.11-12.6-8) and (SL.5-8.1, 3) (SL.8.4-5) (SL.9-10.1-5, 11-12.1-5)
A SOUNDLESS WORLD
1)
Deafness creates a different experience of the world. Sit quietly for five minutes with your eyes closed, listening to the sounds around you. Do you hear the hum of a computer, the ticking of a clock, wind, rain, laughter, or other sounds? What does each sound mean to you? Write a paragraph describing this experience.
2)
Create a poster featuring this quote from the novel “Hear with your eyes.” Surround the text with illustrations or other art elements depicting how Joey does this in the novel.
3)
Look back through the text to find passages describing Joey’s experience of the world. Which senses does she use to compensate for her deafness? Write a paragraph describing your experience of the classroom or other space in which you are seated right now, focusing on what you see, smell, and feel. Share your writing with friends or classmates and discuss how these paragraphs might have been different had you been allowed to incorporate the sense of hearing.
SIGN LANGUAGE
1)
Go to the library or online to learn more about American Sign Language (ASL) and its role in the deaf world. Practice the ASL alphabet. If possible, try signing with a deaf member of your community—or try signing a conversation with a hearing friend or classmate. Afterward, write a short essay describing the process trying to learn some basic ASL and your experience trying to communicate through signing. If you have studied a foreign language, compare the experience of learning ASL to that of learning a second spoken language. (Hint: Try visiting www.aslpro.com or www.handspeak.com.)
2)
ASL has been the source of several critical debates, including whether deaf children (especially those who have received cochlear implants) should be taught to sign, and whether primates, such as chimpanzees, can learn to communicate fully (e.g., in a conceptual, human way) using ASL. Go to the library or online to learn more about one of these issues. Use the information you find as the basis for a classroom debate for–and against–signing in one of these cases.
3)
In the character of Joey, write a letter to her mother trying to explain why it is so important that you learn to sign. Or, in the character of Charlie Mansell, write a letter to Joey’s mother explaining why you believe Joey should have this opportunity.
SUKARI
1)
Chimpanzees are primates who share 98.4% of thier DNA with humans. Go to the library or online to learn more about chimpanzees and other great apes, their natural habitats, endangerment status, and the fate of unwanted chimpanzees in America. (Hint: Begin your research by visiting http://www.projetogap.org.br/en/ or www.janegoodall.org/chimpanzees.) If possible, visit a zoo to learn more about nonhuman primates. Create an informational pamphlet based on your research. Or, make a poster advocating for the protection and care of these special species.
2)
Lynn feels terrible when she can no longer care for Sukari. Imagine Hurt Go Happy is being made into a movie. Write the script for the scene in which Lynn and her husband decide that Sukari can no longer live in their home. Invite friends or classmates to perform the scene.
3)
Although Sukari is a fictional character, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught sign language through a variety of experimental programs. Go to the library or online to learn more about these efforts. Create a PowerPoint presentation about one such primate to share with classmates of friends. (Hint: Visit www.friendsofwashoe.org, www.faunafoundation.org or www.koko.org to begin your research.)
4)
Imagine you have just had the opportunity to meet Sukari. Write a journal entry describing your first meeting, your feelings, your questions, and your hopes for future encounters. Would you like to learn to sign so that you could communicate with Sukari? Why or why not?
PROTECTING THE VULNERABLE
1)
Write an essay explaining why Sukari is so important to Joey. Do you think that if Joey were not deaf—or if her deafness were not the result of abuse—this friendship would be the same? Share your essay with friends or classmates. Did most students give the same reasons for Joey and Sukari’s strong bond? Why or why not? What was the most surprising discover you made about Joey by writing about her relationship with Sukari?
2)
Go to the library or online to learn more about domestic violence and abuse. Create an informative poster about how to spot signs of abuse, how to help friends in abusive relationships, or a related topic that is important to you.
3)
Create a word collage, mural, or other object that explores the concept of PERSON. As you create your artwork, consider these questions: Do you have to be a human (homo sapien) to be a person? Do you have to have a home to be a person? Do you to have to be able to communicate, love, or ultimately care for yourself? If possible, create an exhibit of PERSON artworks made by you and your friends or classmates. Invite other members of the community to tour your exhibit.
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Writing & Discussion Activities
The pre-reading writing and discussion activities below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: (W.5-8.3, 9-10.3, 11-12.3); (SL.5-8.1, 9-10.1, 11-12.1)
1)
Hurt Go Happy explores the lines of communication and affection between humans and chimpanzees. Ask students to consider their interactions with other animals, such as caring for a pet, an encounter with a primate at a zoo, an experience riding horseback, or perhaps working on a farm. Have each student write a short reflection on a moment when they felt a special connection with an animal and what they imagine the animal felt at the same time.
2)
Ask each student to imagine he or she is deaf or has another disability such as blindness or a lost limb. Write a journal-style essay describing an ordinary morning, paying particular attention to activities, such as hearing an alarm clock or getting down stairs, which would require new or different skills to perform with a disability. If students have friends, classmates or family members, with disabilities they may choose to transcribe an interview with them about their strategies for starting each day.
3)
Invite students to discuss their thoughts about testing medicines, chemicals, and other products on animals and/or their thoughts on the pros and cons of keeping animals confined in zoos. Have they read about these issues in the newspaper or online? Are they concerned about these or related animal rights issues? Have these topics ever been discussed around their family table? Would they consider helping an organization dedicated to the protection of one or many animal species? Why or why not?
Writing & Discussion Activities
The discussion questions below correlate to the following Common Core State Standards: (RL.5-8.1, 2, 3) (RL.9-10.1-5) (RL.11-12.1-6); (SL.5-8.1, 3, 4) (SL.6-8.2, 3) (SL.9-10.1, 3, 4) (SL.11-12.1, 3, 4)
1)
How is Joey awakened in the opening lines of the novel? How does she make sense of this moment? With the ability to hear, how might you have experienced this moment differently than Joey?
2)
Early in the story, Joey is frustrated by her thumb-sucking. Why do you think this young teen still sucks her thumb? What might this tell you about her character?
3)
What moments in the story best help you to understand the isolation imposed by Joey’s disability? What type of language does the author use to convey Joey’s experience of deaf life to readers?
4)
Describe Joey’s relationship with her mother, stepfather, and brother. Which is the most complicated relationship and why?
5)
Joey first meets Charlie while foraging for mushrooms. What is Charlie’s first reaction to Joey? How does Joey first feel about Charlie? How might wild mushrooms be seen as an appropriate image to reflect the complexity of many relationships and events in the novel?
6)
About how many signs has Sukari learned? Do you think her signing reveals a sense of humor or other human qualities? What do you think of the fact that chimpanzees have 98.4% of the same DNA as humans?
7)
List at least three ways in which Joey and Sukari have led similar lives. Explain how this might help Joey identify so closely with Sukari.
8)
Why does Joey’s mother object to her relationships with Charlie Mansell and Sukari? Why are these friendships so important to Joey?
9)
Why doesn’t Joey’s mother want her to sign? Is she right or wrong? If you were trying to help Joey get permission to learn to sign, what arguments might you make to her mother?
10)
Who is Roxy? Is she truly a friend to Joey? What important and painful lesson does her relationship with Roxy teach Joey?
11)
How does Joey’s life change when Ruth, Ray, and Luke meet Sukari and Charlie? What are the positives and negatives? How does Joey feel about Luke’s relationship with Sukari? What reasons might you suggest for the author’s decison to show a toddler’s relationship with Sukari, in addition to teen and adult relationships, in the novel?
12)
At what point in the novel do you come to understand the true cause of Joey’s deafness? Why do you think the author chose to reveal this information gradually?
13)
Cite at least two passages where weather events or other acts of nature mirror or counterpoint dramatic moments in the plot. How does the author’s use of storm imagery add texture and meaning to the story?
14)
What gift does Charlie leave to Joey upon his death? Where does Joey go? When does she come to learn of another part of his legacy: that she is Sukari’s guardian? Is this a gift, a burden, or both?
15)
What does Joey do when she learns what has happened to Sukari since she left Lynn’s home? Do you think she takes the right actions? Why or why not?
16)
What strange experience does Joey have in San Francisco? Why do you think the author includes this episode in the story? How does it teach or strengthen Joey?
17)
How does Joey work to save Sukari? How does Ruth become her unlikely ally in this effort? What does this show you about their changing relationship? In what ways must Joey continue to assert her independence as she struggles to save Sukari?
18)
Where does Joey ultimately find a home for Sukari? What does the future look like for Joey? How has Sukari’s life influenced the person Joey hopes to become?
19)
While the novel is an impassioned plea for recognizing the rights of non-human primates, the news sometimes reports incidents in which primates kept in home environments such as Charlie’s, or sanctuary environments, have harmed keepers or others. Does this information change your perspective on the events in the novel? If so, what advice might you have offered Charlie, Lynn, Joey, or others at key moments in the story?
20)
What is the meaning of the title, Hurt Go Happy? When does Joey realize the significance of this phrase? How might this phrase apply to Joey herself or to others in the novel?
21)
If you were helping develop guidelines for the best ways humans can interact with non-human primates, and the rights that non-human primates should be given, what are three recommendations you would give?
22)
In the Afterward, to whom does Ginny Rorby dedicate this novel? Do her words affect your understanding of Hurt Go Happy? Are you inspired to advocate for the protection of chimpanzees, or perhaps another cause, after reading this book? Explain your answer.