Discussion Questions After Seeing Sistas

1. What was most surprising to you in the show?
2. What do you make out of the suffering in the songs of the early Black Blues Singers?
3. How were African-American women expected to behave towards men in the early parts of the 20th Century?
4. How did racism play a part in the self-image that some African-American women have about their bodies and their hair?
5. What do you think about the assertion in the play, that rap singers are oral historians of the street?
6. Do you agree with what Simone says that Devil’s Music versus God’s music back in the 1920s is similar nowadays to rap versus Gospel music?
7. Does every generation have to have music their parents don’t like, as Simone says?
8. Roberta has lines about the injustices to African-Americans in the judicial system. What are other examples of this injustice?
9. How is your life different than your mother’s and grandmother’s?
10. What impact do you think the Supremes and other Girl Groups had on African-American girls in the 1960s?
11. What did Barry Gordy do to make Black music more popular in the larger culture?
12. What do songs today say about the relationship between males and females?