book club discussion questions

1. Tollomi and Michelle share a mysterious, almost psychic ability to communicate with each other, yet for both characters, the failures of language are a central concern.  "I speak six languages," says Tollomi, "and in none of them exists a single word for what is really going on." What kinds of experiences do the characters in the novel feel they lack words for? Are they unnameable due to language or cultural barriers, or for some other reason?
    
2. Author Jane Summer writes of Burning the Sea, "[The novel] explores what happens when we live with our ancestors, and more hauntingly, what happens when we don't." Michelle and Tollomi have both found ways of distancing themselves from their families of origin. To what extent are their personalities are a result of this?  What are the positive aspects of the ways they've learned to cope?
    
3. At the beginning of the novel, Michelle says, "About the world of my mind, I know only this: it has never been explored. Like all unexplored worlds, it is flat like a pancake. Bordered by edges."  Why is the image of a flat world an important reference point in the novel? In what ways does the author weave the history of the Americas into the personal lives of the characters?
    
4. Almost all the significant relationships in the novel are between people of different backgrounds-- ethnic, cultural, and class.  Could the interactions between Tollomi and Carlitos, Tollomi and Michelle, Michelle and Sonia, Sonia and Sam, occur outside of the Caribbean?  Are the choices these characters make influenced by the fact that they are operating in an environment they only partially understand? 
    
5. Carlitos's brother, Jose Luis, quotes a Dominican saying: "He who does not go to the United States dies innocent." What does he mean? How do his and Tollomi's attitudes about the U.S. affect Carlitos? By the end of the novel, do you think Carlitos would agree with the quotation?
    
6. One reviewer wrote of Burning the Sea, "To others, the pair seems charming and bright, but they can see each other for what they are, Tollomi being beckoned by mermaids to drown, Michelle followed by the ghost of her grandfather." How do Michelle's and Tollomi's perceptions of each other change their beliefs about themselves? How does their relationship explore the shifting nature of identity--sexual, cultural, personal?
    
7. The novel is full of dreams remembered, dreams supressed, and dreams deferred.  What is the risk of sharing one's dreams with other people?  When Michelle remembers Tollomi's forgotten nightmares, is it a liberating experience?  In what ways is she changed by remembering her own experience?
    
8. The title of the novel brings together two recurring images in the story: fire and water.  The plot turns on drownings and near-drownings, fires and near-fires.  Tollomi describes the colonization of the Americas as a series of fires, saying, "The Tainos understand that the Europeans have come into their world in order to burn it down. Nothing is off limits." In the context of this passage, how do you understand the title? Does it have different meanings in the context of the different character's lives?