Tell It to Me Singing

Monica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held secret: Monica's father is not the man who raised her. But when her mother wakes up and begins having delusional episodes, Monica doesn't know what to believe--whether the confession was real or just a channeling of the telenovela her mother watches nightly.

In her despair, Monica wants to speak with only one person: her ex-boyfriend of five years, Manny. She can't help but worry, though, what this says about her relationship with her fiancé and father of her unborn child.

Monica's search for the truth leads her to a new understanding of the past: the early eighties when her parents arrived from Cuba on the famous Mariel boatlift, and the tumultuous seventies, a decade after Castro's takeover, when some people were still secretly fighting his regime--people like her mother and the man she claims is Monica's real father. Tell It to Me Singing is a story that takes readers from Miami to Cuba to the jungles of Costa Rica and, along the way, explores the question of how and to whom we belong, how a life is built, and how we know when we're home.

These book club questions are from the publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Book club questions for Tell It to Me Singing by Tita Ramirez

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

What do you know about telenovelas or soap operas? Have you ever watched one? What common traits and themes of this style of show do you see reflected in the plot of Tell It to Me Singing?

After finding out she is pregnant with Robert’s baby, Monica starts to evaluate her feelings for Robert. She wonders if there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with them. Do you think there is a difference? Explain your thinking.

Monica’s mother is about to head into a major surgery and suddenly confesses that she has been lying about her daughter’s parentage for her entire life. Has a family member ever dropped life altering information like this on you in real life? How did you process the information? What feelings and emotions came with the situation?

Describe the complex feelings Mirta must have while carrying out her affair with Juan, finding out she is pregnant with his baby while married with a child to Rolando, and choosing to keep Monica’s parentage a secret from her for 29 years. Attempt to get into her head, and describe what you think her thought process must have been when making each of those decisions.

Why might Mirta be okay with never telling Juan he has a child, even if it brings her extreme guilt? What does it cost her to obey Rolando’s wishes? What does she gain by keeping the secret?

Mirta laments that Rolando has never said he has forgiven her for her affair, only that he has accepted it. She states that “acceptance and forgiveness are not the same thing…but sometimes they are close enough” (90). What does she mean by this? Do you agree with her statement?

How do instances like Mirta dropping Monica underwater as an infant, and the guilt that consumes her after, along with the incident at the park, speak to the experience of mental health during the postpartum period? How is this exacerbated for Mirta given her current situation when Monica is a newborn?

Why do you think it is easier for Monica to go straight to Manny after finding out the whole story of her parentage from Mirta while Robert is out of town? What about the secret she just learned might have caused her to kiss Manny?

Learning that Juan is still alive, Mirta becomes determined to find him and tell him that he has a daughter. This upsets Monica, who angrily tells her mom that it is her life too and she deserves to be part of these decisions, though this might be a “foreign concept” to her mother. Can you think of a time where you have felt like Monica, where a family member or someone close to you wanted to make a big decision for you? Can you think of a time where you felt like Mirta, where you just wanted to do what you thought was right after feeling like you’d made a mistake?

Mirta flees by herself to Costa Rica with the hopes of tracking down Juan, only to be met with serious danger. Do you think she would have made such a bold decision had she not been recovering both physically and mentally from a major surgery? Would she have made the same decision if Juan was still a secret to Monica? Why or why not?

Monica tells Robert her decision to end things with him has nothing to do with Manny, but might it have something to do with Mirta? Could knowing what her mother went through with her own true love have prompted her in some way to choose a different path? What would you have done if you were in Monica’s position and would it be an easy decision?

After all is said and done, how is it that Monica is able to forgive Mirta for everything that has happened? How have you been able to forgive a close family member for things they may have done in the past or even in the present? Where does that forgiveness come from?

What parallels can you draw between the two major love triangles? In what way do Monica, Manny and Robert resemble Mirta, Juan, and Rolando?

How do you think the story was enhanced by the chapters containing Mirta’s thoughts and backstory? How would your understanding of the story have been different if it was only told from Monica’s perspective?

Tell It to Me Singing Book Club Questions PDF

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