The Ditchdigger’s Daughters by Dr. Yvonne S. Thornton[2006]
Book & Author Information
Donald Thornton, a ditchdigger in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, has the perfect comeback for all the people that tease him about having five daughters and no sons: “You won’t be laughin’ when my little girls grow up to be doctors.” Against stiff odds of growing up black and in poverty in the 1950’s, two of Thornton’s daughters did grow up to be doctors. Determination, involvement in the arts, and a family emphasis on education created a home environment in which the girls could succeed. This memoir provides readers not only with the Thornton’s’ story, but a high-interest look at New Jersey’s Black history.
Read-Alikes
Discussion Questions
Related Resources
Read-Alikes
The Pact by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Lisa Frazier Page
Finding Fish: A Memoir by Antwone Q. Fisher, Mim E. Rivas
A Hope in the Unseen : An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story by M.D., Ben Carson, Mr. Cecil Murphey
Rutgers University Libraries NJ Women's History Bibliography
- Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1836. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
- Lobdell, Jared C., ed. Silvia Dubois: A Biografy of the Slav Who Whipt Her Mistress and Gand Her Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Marshall, Kenneth E. "Work, Family and Day-to-Day Survival on an Old Farm: Nance Melick, A Rural Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century New Jersey Slave Woman." Slavery & Abolition 19 no. 3 (1998): 22-45.
- Moses, Sibyl Elizabeth. African American Women Writers in New Jersey, 1836-2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
- Moses, Sibyl Elizabeth. "The Identification and Bibliographic Control of Publications by African American Women Writers in New Jersey." Ph. D. diss., University of Illinois, 1995.
- New Jersey: The Afro-American Experience. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Historical Society, 1981.
- Toombes, Earnestine. "Jeanette Lake Cascone (August 10, 1918-September 29, 1998): Encouraging Youth and Families, Teaching African-American History." Journal of Negro History 84, no.2 (1999): 214-215.
Discussion Questions
Below are some sample discussion questions that can be used with Dr. Thornton's book. Some are general discussion questions that can be used in any book discussion; others are more specific to The Ditchdigger's Daughter.
- Did you enjoy reading the book? What was your favorite part? What didn't you like about it?
- Are any of the events in the book relevant to your own life?
- Does the book appeal more to your emotions or your intellect (does it make you /feel/ or make you /think/)? How and why?
- Was the author fairly descriptive in the way she wrote the book? Was she better at describing the concrete or the abstract? Was the author clear about what she was trying to say, or were you confused by some of what you read? How did this affect your reading of the book?
- How did the structure (grammar, dialect, etc.) affect the way you read and understood the story? Did it have any impact on how you viewed the characters?
- This book was written as a tribute to the author's family; why do you think she chose to tell this story?
- This story was written from the specific perspective of one daughter. How do you think the book would have been different if other points of view were telling part of the story, or if the story was told from a different perspective?
- What is stronger in the book, plot or character development? Why?
- Does the book leave you wanting to know more about the lives of the characters?
- What are the most important relationships in the book? How did the parent-child relationships compare with the sister-sister relationships? How do some of the relationships change throughout the book?
- How are the characters independent from or dependent upon each other?
- How do the characters complement one another and help one another develop through the story (or not)?
- Did the characters make choices you might not have agreed with? How might the daughters' lives changed had other choices been made?
- The author's father had a definite plan for his daughters - he wanted them to succeed in very specific ways. Does it seem as though any of the daughters resented him? Do you think he was disappointed that not all of his daughters became doctors?
- Consider the family members and the family as a whole: What do they believe in? What are they willing to stand up for or to fight for? How do their beliefs change (or not) from the beginning to the end of the story?
- A lot of music was incorporated into the Thornton lifestyle. How do you think this helped form a cohesive family unit? And how do you think music influenced their lives, decisions, and relationships?
- What effects did events (time, nationality, physicality) have on a character's self or personality and decisions? How did culture guide much of their lives?
Related Resources
Dr. Yvonne Thornton’s website
Dr. Yvonne Thornton’s Website for information about the author.
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center
The full text of a Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center journal article which contains a review of the book.
African American Literature Book Club
Kensington Publishing
This publisher's site includes a brief biography of the author and a synopsis of the book.