Women We Buried, Women We Burned

From the author of the groundbreaking, award-winning No Visible Bruises, a riveting memoir of survival, self-discovery, and forgiveness sure to captivate readers who loved Tara Westover's Educated and Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle.

For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is her own story.

Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually travelling the globe.

Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, and Niger, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In Cambodia, where she lived for six years, she watched a country reckon with the horrors of its own recent history. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a new perspective on old family wounds, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.

Book club questions for Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder

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

Do you believe it was the author’s father’s overwhelming grief that drove him so deeply into the church, or were there other psychological factors that resulted in his new commitment? What could those be? How does the church influence his approach to other things in his life aside from family, like work and money?

Why was Karen Jones so important to the author? What kind of an impact did she have, and how is that impact felt in the present day?

Rachel and her father experience a shift after he slaps her for the first time. This sets off a new phase of corporal punishment for all the children in the household. Why do you think he turns to this type of punishment? Why does he continue it?

What do you think of Rachel’s parents’ attempt to reform the family dynamic with their binders of rules? What do you think of the final rule about “no child or parent abuse”? Do you see that as truly trying to do better? Why do you think they did that, only to follow it with such a drastic decision?

Why do you think Rachel’s father tells her about her lost college fund? Do you think that a sense of misguided guilt was at the root of some of his abuse?

There is a noticeable shift in the author after she enters college. What was it about education that changed her? In what ways did it change how she thought about her present? Her future?

While the author is on her Semester at Sea, she observes that she and many of her peers have a shared experience. What is that experience? What does her professor say might be the reason many of them have ended up in the same place?

On her visit to China as part of the ship’s theater troupe, a tour guide claims that the Tiananmen Square protests were peaceful, and that no one died. How did this impact the author’s view of language and its power? Why do you think this resonated so strongly with the author? In what ways do you see language as powerful in your own life?

After the author and her friend witness a man’s self-immolation in Cambodia, she reflects that the nation itself showed signs of trauma in everyday life, in “public displays of private pain.” Would you say that there are also collective traumas in American culture? Are there any that the whole nation has experienced, or only some groups? In what ways do they show themselves?

How would you describe Rachel’s choice of subject matter as a journalist? What are her reasons? What kinds of affinity draw her to these subjects?

During the author’s visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum she experiences the “limits of her own courage,” and she feels the presence of something beyond her five senses. How does Cambodia’s cultural belief in ghosts figure into Women We Buried, Women We Burned? What ghosts does the author recognize in her own life? Does she welcome them?

As an adult, the author eschews any kind of religion, refusing even to enter churches during her travels. But while in Cambodia she begins to view religion differently. What is it about her changing views that allows her to better understand her father’s religious fervor?

Rachel’s choice to care for her stepmother allows her to experience what she hadn’t been able to as a child. How was this healing for both Rachel and Barbara? What is similar about her father’s behavior towards both her mother’s and stepmother’s illness? Does this kind of behavior extend to other parts of his life?

Which “women” do you think the title of the book refers to? How do you understand the verbs “buried” and “burned” in the title?

Women We Buried, Women We Burned Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Women We Buried, Women We Burned discussion questions

“Snyder’s memoir is as heartbreaking, wrenching and compelling as the stories of the victims in her eye-opening book on domestic violence . . . In explaining her own history, Snyder shows why she was drawn to the darkest stories and how she is able to retell them with such detail and compassion . . . The violence and neglect of her adolescence sounds nearly unsurvivable. And yet she is here, proof that there can be healing, reconciliation and professional triumph.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Compelling, propulsive, gripping and disturbing in equal measure." —BookPage, starred review

“A penetrating memoir on grief and redemption . . . Snyder delivers her inspiring story with lyrical prose and sharp insights, particularly about the fraught father-daughter relationship at its center. It’s an eloquent portrayal of the power of forgiveness.” —Publishers Weekly

“Snyder’s earlier book, No Visible Bruises, a damning examination of domestic violence in the United States, was named one of the Book Review’s 10 best books of 2019. Now, she reflects on her own life—her mother’s death at an early age, the circumstances that forced her to leave home and school as a teenager, the reporting she did around the globe.” —New York Times

“An affecting memoir . . . Excellent writing and a clear perspective enhance this primer on how to hope.” —Los Angeles Times

“[A] gripping memoir . . . Snyder’s curiosity is matched by her own resilience; writing stories about survivors parallels her own story of overcoming trauma and finding grace.” —Washington Post

“Snyder’s most recent book, No Visible Bruises, explored the psychological entanglements of domestic violence. This offering once again considers complex relationships, but at a personal level . . . searingly honest and moving.” —Booklist

“The tenacity and bravery of a young woman determined to survive and make her own mark on the world move the narrative with unstoppable force as the sentences build in intensity and poignancy . . . Anyone moved by No Visible Bruises should put this at the top of their to-read list. Exceptional writing, a harrowing coming-of-age story, and critical awareness combine to make a must-read memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“How do you write a book about overcoming extreme hardship, about the singular people who convince you to take a chance on yourself, about finding the big world after a childhood that prepared you for a tiny one, about discovering that you love the people who failed to love you - and manage not to strike a single trite note? How do you remember every detail and make the reader feel like they saw, heard, and felt each moment? I have no idea, actually, but Rachel Louise Snyder has done it.” —Masha Gessen, National Book Award winning author of The Future Is History and Surviving Autocracy

“With wonderfully evocative prose, Rachel Louise Snyder captures here the stark horror of a child losing her mother and half her roots as she’s then swept into her evangelical father’s second family and has to either flee or be erased. As nakedly honest as it is fair, what is so remarkable about Women We Buried, Women We Burned is that Snyder does flee, and her lone voyage to her very self is the voyage of so many girls and women around the world who have been uprooted and cast aside and must find their own way back. This is an important and profoundly moving memoir, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.” —Andre Dubus III, New York Times bestselling author of Townie and Such Kindness

“A bold and searing memoir about family and violence, illness and independence, pain and fear and beauty. With wry humor and enormous humanity, Rachel Louise Snyder shows us how to summon the courage to imagine in a cruel and dangerous world. A beautiful book.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Rogues, Empire of Pain, and Say Nothing

“With the same virtuosity and eye for detail she brought to No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder uses her own story to illuminate the many divides that plague America, from class and culture wars to toxic religiosity and frayed family ties. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a gorgeous memoir that parses the patriarchy with an endearing frankness as fierce as it is, astonishingly, forgiving.” —Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Raising Lazarus and Dopesick

“Bravery and honesty are the cornerstone of the memoir, but Snyder adds to this-generosity. This is a compassionate telling of a sometimes brutal story. Women We Buried, Women We Burned reminds me of opera, with its beautiful sadness and artistic triumph. The hope contained on these pages is hard won, and all the more precious due to the struggles from which it emerges.” —Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage

“With a journalist's keen eye and a novelist's elegant prose, Rachel Louise Snyder delivers an unsentimental and bone-deep observational memoir of death and family, class and history, East and West, and politics and travel; at the center of each story is a reaffirmation of human survival as an art of triumph.” —Suki Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Without You, There Is No Us

“A harrowing story of survival that also brims with warmth, wit and insight, this memoir has the propulsive force of a novel, driven by a spirit of compassion and curiosity that will not be broken.” —Jessica Bruder, New York Times bestselling author of Nomadland

“A propulsive, clear-eyed, and stunning memoir about transformation, self-discovery, and the journey we go on when we decide that yes, we want to do more than simply survive; we want to thrive. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a revelation.” —Chelsea Bieker, author of Heartbroke and Godshot

“Rachel Louise Snyder's story begins with a series of profound losses but becomes, in her careful and compassionate telling, a story about what we might gain by looking directly at the most difficult parts of our pasts. This is a gorgeous and radiantly honest book, brilliant in its ability to capture the way grief reverberates across a lifetime. Rather than force trauma into a false closure, Snyder transforms it into a radical openness and ability to connect.” —Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

“As stunning as it is powerful, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a tour-de-force memoir of family, faith, love, loss, resilience, and, ultimately, redemption. With deftness and grace, Snyder navigates the complicated terrain of childhood trauma and presents a model for how to reconcile with the ghosts of your past.” —Monica West, author of Revival Season

“Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a profoundly moving and layered memoir that is nuanced in all the spaces where life gets complicated. A writer with wit as sharp as her prose, Rachel Louise Snyder's story connects on so many levels because she writes honestly about traumas, forgiveness, and the hard work it takes to build a life. A truly stunning book that will broaden hearts and minds, and also educate and inspire.” —Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father