Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for Punished includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, ElseMaj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families. As mandated by the government, these children of Sámi reindeer herders must attend a “nomad school” where they are forced to assimilate to Swedish culture. Forbidden from speaking their native language and threatened into obedience by their abusive Housemother, the truth about the cruelties they face remains repressed for years.

In the 1980s, these five characters have chosen different paths to cope with the scars of their past. Then one day their old Housemother, Rita, reappears in their lives as a feeble old woman who seemingly feels no repentance for the pain she has inflicted, and these former students are faced with the dark memories her reappearance surfaces. As the narrative shifts among each of their perspectives and across the gulf of thirty years, the novel asks: If you had the chance to punish the person who hurt you as a child, would you? Based on true stories from the author’s mother, Punished is an unforgettable novel about the afterlives of abuse, systemic cultural erasure, and the importance of community—a righteous reckoning with a nation’s unforgivable betrayal of its Indigenous people.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. The novel alternates between the 1950s and the 1980s, and a cast of five main characters. What did you think of this structure? And why do you think the author chose to open the novel from Anna’s perspective, instead of one of the children’s?

2. Among the many traumas students at the nomad school endure, the prohibition of the Sámi language is chief among them. What impact does it have on the children? Why do you think Housemother is so militant about prohibiting Sámi?

3. The novel leaves a number of Sámi and Swedish terms untranslated. What value does having these words presented in their original language add to the reading experience? How did it influence your reading experience?

4. On multiple occasions, such as Jon-Ante’s conversation with his mother when he is back home after the stomping incident, the children choose not to disclose how bad the abuse at school is to adults who could help them. Why do you think is this?

5. Anna and Pekka are two adult characters who witness the abuse of the children and offer some comfort but are ultimately unable—or unwilling—to stop it. Why? Discuss the complicated, contradicting factors that both spur these characters to act, but also immobilize them.

6. In adulthood, all five of the main characters have developed distinct coping mechanisms to deal with the scars of their past—for example, despite being determined to raise her children to have a strong Sámi identity, Else-Maj has also become a Christian, something her husband cannot bring himself to understand. Consider the other four characters— how does the trauma that they endured at the nomad school inform their lives as adults? Were you surprised by how any of them turned out?

7. Else-Maj and Nilsa both experience the tragic loss of a younger sibling, someone they intrinsically felt a responsibility to protect. How does the loss—and their age when it happened—shape their lives and understanding of their own experiences of victimhood?

8. On pages 325, Marge reflects on her feelings of guilt, thirty years later, over witnessing Jon-Ante’s abuse at the hands of Housemother: “Guilt had plagued her for years afterward . . . She had even written about it in her diary, calling herself a coward and brooding over the question of whether she was partly to blame. The melodramatic thought that an onlooker who didn’t act was just as guilty as the perpetrator.” Discuss the long tail of Marge’s guilt. Do you think a bystander can be just as guilty as a perpetrator?

9. Nilsa, the bully, is vilified throughout the novel, but we later find out where he may have learned this behavior as a child. How do these revelations help to contextualize Nilsa’s character? In a book that so thoroughly explores the righteous anger of those who have been harmed, what does it mean to explore the interiority of a perpetrator as well?

10. Consider how each of the five characters reacts to seeing Rita again. What do these responses say about their dispositions? How do you think you would have reacted?

11. On page 396, Marge shares with Jon-Ante that she intends to keep her experience at a nomad school from Stella, as it is hard for her to imagine telling her child about the abuse she endured. However, just a few pages later, she ends up unable to avoid the subject, leading to a moment of reckoning where the uneasy resonances between her and Stella’s experiences are laid bare. Why do parents choose to keep certain things from their children? What does this scene illustrate about the uneasy nuances of Marge’s relationship with Stella, and a parent’s relationship with their child in general?

12. Victimhood, and the various characters’ reticence to claim it, is a major theme in the novel. Discuss the ways it binds and motivates the characters throughout. In the end, the novel gives the students the opportunity to make Housemother the victim; what did you think of the choices they made about whether—and how—to take revenge?

13. Punished forces the characters to confront the limitations of their ability to forgive. At the end of the novel, where do you think each of them lands on this question? Have you learned something about your own capacity to forgive?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Read Ann-Helén Laestadius’s first novel, Stolen, and watch the Netflix original movie adaptation. How do the book and film expand your understanding of Sámi culture?

2. The nomad schools of Sweden are not the only ones of their kind. On a global scale, state-mandated primary schools, for the purpose of the abusive assimilation of young Indigenous peoples, were a common technique of colonization. Research another instance of these schools, such as the American Indian residential schools that populated North America, and share with the group.