Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow: 12 Analytical Essay Prompts

How to Use These Prompts

Each prompt below targets a specific element of Memphis — character change, causality, relationships, contrasting scenes, themes, symbols, structure, foreshadowing, or the ending. Use the evidence leads as starting points, not exhaustive lists. For deeper background, consult the themes overview or the character pages before drafting.

1. Joan's Transformation: From Paralyzed Witness to Artist

The prompt: Trace Joan's evolution from the child who wets herself at the sight of Derek in 1995 to the young woman who confronts him at Riverbend in 2003. What enables this change, and what does it cost her?

Why it matters: Joan's arc is the novel's spine. Understanding what enables her transformation — and what remains unresolved — illuminates the book's argument about healing as a communal, not solitary, process.

Sample thesis direction: Joan's healing is not a triumphant arc but a slow accumulation of small acts — Miss Dawn's instruction, August's protection, Mya's insistence, and her own art — that together give her the strength to face Derek; the prison visit is not catharsis but a necessary reckoning that leaves her ashamed as well as freed.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2 (Joan 1995): paralysis, wetting herself, forcing herself inside only for Mya's sake
Chapter 11 (Joan 1995): Miss Dawn's instruction to bury Derek's comb at midnight
Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): art as worship — “Art is air” — and the portfolio of neighborhood women
Chapter 32 (Joan 2003): driving stick, fixing the car herself, telling Mya about the rape, and the acceptance letter

2. The Causality of Derek's Violence

The prompt: The novel refuses to present Derek as a simple monster. What causal chain does Stringfellow construct for his violence, and what does that chain suggest about cycles of harm and accountability?

Why it matters: Derek is both perpetrator and victim. Examining his causality complicates easy judgments and connects to the novel's intergenerational trauma theme.

Sample thesis direction: Derek's violence is traced to his father's abuse and the state's failures — CPS removals, August's lost education — but the novel ultimately holds him accountable while refusing to excuse the system that shaped him; August's testimony at sentencing makes this double vision explicit.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 7 (Miriam 1995): August mentions Derek's father died in a knife fight
Chapter 15 (August 1997): Derek's history — petty theft, attacking Joan in 1988, breaking a classmate's arm, two removals by state authorities
Chapter 24 (Miriam 2001): August testifies about Derek's abusive father and pleads for life without parole
Chapter 32 (Joan 2003): Derek aged, shackled, intimidated by another inmate; Joan's shame at having gotten revenge

3. Miriam and August: The Novel's True Marriage

The prompt: How does the sisterhood between Miriam and August function as the novel's most reliable relationship, and what does it offer that their romantic relationships cannot?

Why it matters: The novel repeatedly shows marriages failing — Miriam and Jax, Hazel and Myron (through death), August's own losses — while the sister bond endures. Analyzing this contrast reveals the book's values.

Sample thesis direction: The Miriam–August bond is the novel's true marriage: it provides protection, confession, and material support where romantic partnerships offer only violence or absence, and it is tested and strengthened precisely when the sisters disagree.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 4 (August 1978): August's silent warning to Jax from the plum tree
Chapter 7 (Miriam 1995): shared whiskey, August's “You're only a bad mother if you don't feed them”
Chapter 9 (August 1988): August tackles Jax, catches Miriam, protects the pregnancy
Chapter 15 (August 1997): the fierce argument about Derek and the girls — even conflict is intimate
Chapter 31 (Miriam 2003): August insists Miriam see Joan's art; the revelation in Derek's room

4. Contrasting Resistance: Hazel 1955 and Miriam 1995

The prompt: Compare Hazel's defiance at the Memphis police station in 1955 with Miriam's escape from Jax in 1995. How does each woman resist, and what do the differences reveal about the novel's historical sweep?

Why it matters: These two scenes bookend the novel's treatment of Black women's resistance — one against white supremacy, one against domestic violence — and together they show how the threats changed while the need for self-invention remained constant.

Sample thesis direction: Hazel's resistance is public and confrontational — spitting in Barnes's face — while Miriam's is private and strategic — fleeing, returning to school, refusing Jax's money; the shift reflects how the dangers moved from the state into the home, but both women claim agency through defiance.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 19 (Hazel 1955): spitting in Barnes's face; “You're lucky I'm pregnant, too”
Chapter 20 (Hazel 1955): neighbors standing vigil; Emmett Till's lynching on Miriam's birth day
Chapter 2 (Miriam 1995): selling belongings, the free sign on the Mustang, the drive through the Smoky Mountains
Chapter 7 (Miriam 1995): returning to school at forty, refusing Jax's money
Chapter 29 (Miriam 2001): “I saved myself”

5. The Comb: Folk Magic, Revenge, and Ambivalence

The prompt: Trace the comb's journey from Derek's possession to Joan's buried talisman to the object she digs up and spits on in 2002. What does this object come to mean?

Why it matters: The comb is the novel's most potent symbol of folk magic and Joan's ambivalent relationship to her own agency — did she cause Derek's imprisonment, and does she want to have?

Sample thesis direction: The comb transforms from a tool of folk magic Joan uses to banish Derek into a symbol of her complicity in his imprisonment; her spitting on it marks her rejection of that magic in favor of art as her true power.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 11 (Joan 1995): Miss Dawn's instruction — bury something of his, at midnight, tell no one
Chapter 11 (Joan 1995): two years later Derek is in jail; Joan's belief in the magic
Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): Miss Dawn says she must dig up the comb or she won't go anywhere
Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): Joan digs it up on Christmas night and spits on it

6. Structure: The Non-Linear, Multi-Generational Timeline

The prompt: The novel moves between 1937 and 2003, shifting point of view among Hazel, Miriam, August, and Joan. How does this structure shape the reader's understanding of trauma and healing?

Why it matters: The fragmented timeline is not arbitrary; it mirrors how trauma is remembered and how healing requires re-narrating the past.

Sample thesis direction: The non-linear structure enacts the novel's argument that healing requires revisiting rather than suppressing the past; each generation's chapter reframes what came before, and the reader, like Joan, must assemble the full picture to understand the present.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 1 (Epigraph): Morrison and André 3000 frame the themes before the story begins
Chapter 8 (Miriam 1988): the assault revealed retrospectively, out of chronological order
Chapter 9 (August 1988): August's promise to give Joan anything she asks for
Chapter 32 (Joan 2003): Joan tells Mya the full story — the disclosure completes the circuit

7. Foreshadowing: The Epigraphs as Thesis

The prompt: How do the two epigraphs — Toni Morrison on Black women's rage and André 3000 on the South — function as a thesis for the novel?

Why it matters: The epigraphs are the novel's first words; analyzing them reveals the book's central concerns before the story begins.

Sample thesis direction: The Morrison epigraph frames the novel's exploration of Black women's burdened resilience, while the André 3000 epigraph claims the South as a site of Black expression; together they promise a story about how Southern Black women forge identity through art and community.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 1: the epigraphs themselves
Throughout: Hazel's quilting, August's singing, Joan's drawing
Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): “Art is air”
Chapter 31 (Miriam 2003): the ten paintings in Derek's room

8. The Ending: London, the Quilt, and Collective Legacy

The prompt: The novel ends with Joan's acceptance to the Royal College of Art and Miriam's promise to make her a quilt. How does this ending resolve — or complicate — the novel's themes?

Why it matters: The ending is the payoff for Joan's arc and for the generations of women who came before; analyzing it reveals what the novel believes about legacy and art as healing.

Sample thesis direction: The ending suggests that healing and legacy are collective acts: Joan's individual achievement is underwritten by the women who sat for her, hid her drawings, and will quilt her a farewell; the quilt connects her to Della, Hazel, and the family's artistic lineage.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 32 (Joan 2003): the acceptance letter with British stamps; Mama declares they will make a quilt
Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): Auntie August hides drawings in Derek's room; Miss Dawn continues to sit for Joan
Chapter 31 (Miriam 2003): Miriam sees the ten paintings and stays until sunrise
Chapter 11 (Joan 1995): the quilting room, Della's Tree of Life quilt, the blue quilt made for Joan

9. Art vs. Practicality: The Mother–Daughter Conflict

The prompt: Miriam insists Joan become a doctor; Joan insists on art. How does this conflict embody the novel's larger argument about Black women's survival?

Why it matters: The conflict is not just generational — it is about what survival requires and what it costs.

Sample thesis direction: Miriam's insistence on medicine reflects her fear of poverty and her experience of abandonment, while Joan's commitment to art represents the novel's claim that Black women's self-expression is itself a form of survival; the ending vindicates Joan without dismissing Miriam's fear.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 22 (Joan 2002): Miriam's “Name me one successful artist with a dark face”; “Be a doctor, Joan”
Chapter 22: Professor Mason's “You got grit”; “Go to London”
Chapter 18 (Miriam 1997): Miriam snapping at Joan for sketching; “How on earth was art going to save them?”
Chapter 31 (Miriam 2003): Miriam's conversion — she stays in the room until sunrise

10. The South as Homeplace: Wound and Refuge

The prompt: Memphis is both a site of violence — police murder, gang warfare, the flood — and a sanctuary — the yellow door, the beauty shop, the quilting room. How does the novel hold these contradictions?

Why it matters: The novel's title and epigraph claim the South; understanding how Memphis functions as both wound and refuge is central to the South as homeplace.

Sample thesis direction: The novel refuses a sentimental or purely traumatic view of the South; Memphis is a homeplace precisely because it contains both the violence that shaped the Norths and the community that sustains them.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2 (Joan 1995): the living house, vines, cats, hummingbirds — nature as sanctuary
Chapter 13 (Hazel 1937): flood-damaged Memphis, police brutality at Stanley's deli
Chapter 19 (Hazel 1955): Myron murdered by fellow officers
Chapter 11 (August 1995): the beauty salon as sanctuary, communal singing
Chapter 15 (August 1997): gang violence; “This the hood”

11. The Yellow Door: Threshold and Contested Ground

The prompt: The yellow door with the lion's head knocker appears at key moments of arrival and threat. What does it represent as a threshold?

Why it matters: The door marks the boundary between outside danger and inside sanctuary; tracking its appearances reveals the novel's geography of safety.

Sample thesis direction: The yellow door is the novel's emblem of the homeplace — it admits the wounded (Miriam and her daughters) and, later, admits or repels threats (Jax's arrival in 2001) — and its repeated appearance marks the house as both refuge and contested ground.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2 (Joan 1995): Mama knocks on the yellow door with the lion's head knocker
Chapter 24 (August 2001): the family approaches the door with the Remington; Jax and Bird arrive
Chapter 8 (Miriam 1988): the yellow door as a recurring symbol of home and return
Chapter 26 (Joan 2001): Daddy and Uncle Bird arrive at the family home

12. Contrasting Scenes: The Two Hospital Visits

The prompt: Compare the 1988 visit to Mount Zion Baptist Children's Hospital — where Dr. Cobb dismisses Joan's assault — with Miriam's 2001 work as a nurse at Baptist Memorial. What changes, and what remains the same?

Why it matters: These scenes bookend the novel's treatment of medical institutions and Black women's relationship to them, connecting to sisterhood and community as sanctuary.

Sample thesis direction: The shift from victim to caregiver in the same institutional space dramatizes Miriam's self-invention, but the novel suggests the larger system has not changed — Miriam's nursing is an individual triumph within a structure that once failed her daughter.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 8 (Miriam 1988): Dr. Cobb's dismissal — “she won't remember” — and the recommendation of oatmeal baths
Chapter 9 (August 1988): August's fury, the stalled Cadillac, Joan screaming in the car
Chapter 18 (Miriam 1997): unpaid clinical shifts, fourteen-hour days, the library job
Chapter 23 (Miriam 2001): Miriam as nurse preparing a patient when the 9/11 news breaks
Chapter 31 (Miriam 2003): a fourteen-hour shift in the maternity ward

A Note on Evidence

Every prompt above is grounded in the novel's chapter outline and quoted scenes. When you draft, return to the specific chapters cited and quote sparingly — no more than a phrase or two — so your analysis stays your own. For additional help, see the questions and answers page or the main book page.