This is a complex personal essay, created by less complex pieces of journalism. Gerard reports on her parents, she reports on the legal system regarding domestic violence, and she reports on New Thought, Christian Science, etc. When reading creative nonfiction, perhaps even more than when we read fiction, it’s important to look for the “so what?” of an essay. Why do these things matter to us, as readers, who perhaps have no connection with these experiences and these places. Furthermore, I think it has to go beyond just being interesting material. It has to feel personal to the reader in some way or another. Throughout this essay I kept noticing big jumps between subjects. Sometimes between her mother’s work and the history of Christian Science, and sometimes between one of these things and more personal memoir. The essay is circuitous. Frankly, at times the information seems irrelevant. The essay jumps between three spheres: Gerard’s mother, Unity Church of Clearwater, and her own memories. We find the heart of the essay on page 67. Gerard asked her mother “whom she believed she was praying to,” and her mother responded, “It was really more about how the universe functions.”

The universe functions in a nonlinear direction, and so do our lives.

All of these experiences have made Gerard the person she is today, and all of our personal experiences have informed our present. We aren’t necessarily always aware of what shaped us, but most things do to some extent or another. Some of the reporting in the essay feels irrelevant to the heart of “Mother-Father God,” but I think that is part of the point.

1. What do we think of the title? Do you see a double meaning in it?
2. Do you agree about the heart of this essay, or did you find something else? Perhaps, it is the same heart, but we will have different ways of articulating it. Did you not feel anything regarding a heart in this essay?
3. Now that we’ve read two essays, what do we think about the change in style? Did Gerard have a purpose for beginning the collection in such a way?
4. So far, what about the title of the collection, Sunshine State? Does it work? What is uniquely Florida about this collection? I read a review (just an Amazon buyer) that stated confusion, and disappointment, over the title being misleading because it really wasn’t about Florida. Isn’t it though?

I have some more things to mention, but I think it’ll be easier just to flip through the text and point out things that point to national trends (a “so what?” of the essay), characters, and the big jumps I mentioned before.