This reading group guide for Rosarita 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

Rosarita is an exquisitely written, stunning exploration of love, place, memory, history, and the secrets between a mother and her daughter.

Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in the Jardín in San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park’s lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita’s mother—that they had been friends when Bonita’s mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and had never travelled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling of being followed.

Days later, haunted by the encounter, Bonita seeks out the woman and follows her on a tour of what may, or may not, have been her mother’s past. As a series of mysterious events brilliantly unfolds, Bonita is unable to escape the Stranger’s presence, as she is forced to confront questions of truth and identity, and specters of familial and national violence.

A masterpiece of storytelling from a gifted writer, Rosarita is a profound mediation on mothers and marriage, art and self-expression, and how the traumas from the past can impact future generations.

Topics and Questions for Discussion

Go back to the first five pages of the book. How does Desai set the scene? What details does she use to vividly conjure a time and place?

Think about the names that appear in this book—Rosarita, Sarita, Bonita, the Stranger. What are we, as readers, supposed to make of them?

Rosarita is told in the second person. How does this point of view shape our understanding of the story?

Bonita first encounters the Stranger in the Jardín in San Miguel; she also has fond memories of her grandmother’s garden in India. What is the significance of gardens in Rosarita? How does this symbolism illuminate the rest of the narrative?

In the book, the Jardín is the “third space” that makes Bonita’s encounter with the Stranger possible. Reflect on the significance of third spaces. Who, and what, do they service?

On page 33, Desai introduces the concept of “learned fearlessness.” How does learned fearlessness factor throughout the book? How do each of the characters learn fearlessness? And to what extent can fearlessness truly be learned?

When Bonita goes with the Stranger to the art school, the Stranger emphasizes, on page 47, “Here we had Rev-o-lu-tion, not war.” What is the Stranger saying here? What does it have to do with the “gringos” she describes later on in the conversation?

Throughout the book, we see our characters in motion, moving from one country to another, from one spot to another (often via public transport), even from room to room. What do you make of movement throughout the book? What drives that movement? How do the notions of voluntary and forced movement factor into the story?

When Bonita arrives at La Manzanilla, the year-round dwellers tell her why she should stay—and why they do stay. Think about stasis. Do the characters always stay somewhere for the reasons they tell themselves they do?

Throughout the book, there’s the ever-present question of whether Bonita truly is following her mother’s path. Does it matter either way?

When faced with the possibility of knowing her mother’s story, Bonita feels a dissonance: to know, or not to know? Think about the choices she made in the face of this dissonance. Do you think she made the right ones, despite where they led her?

Now that you’ve read Rosarita, you know that the book isn’t about just one thing. Pick a line that, to you, illuminates the book’s most central idea.

Enhance Your Book Club

Read about the Partition of India of 1947 and the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. How do these histories shape your understanding of Rosarita?

Look at the work of Satish Gujral, the painter mentioned in Desai’s author’s note. What strikes you about these paintings? What are some common themes across Gujral’s work? Which is your favorite, and why?

The Trickster is a classic archetype in literature. How does Desai’s deployment of this archetype both follow and break tradition?

How does Desai redefine and disrupt the trope of flâneur, a nineteenth-century French term to describe an aimless (historically male) stroller?

On page 36, Desai writes, “But now you are allowing your own experience of that journey to substitute hers. You have not yet recovered her experience of it.” Reflect on this sentiment, and think of a time you substituted your journey for someone else’s. What drove you to substitute or project? Can you relate to Bonita’s thought process?