Cursed Bunny: Stories

Chung frequently deploys the fairy tale as a narrative form in her stories. Discuss how her use of this form allows her to examine contemporary social issues or moral issues that fit in to both fairy-tale and realistic settings.

Chung’s collection features elements of multiple genres, from science fiction to magical realism. Do all these elements fit within common understandings of “speculative fiction”? How does the collection expand or challenge such understandings? How does it blend elements of multiple subgenres?

Who is the protagonist of “Goodbye, My Love”? Is it the narrator, through whose perspective we experience the story, or is it Model 1, who liberates herself from the narrator’s captivity and transcends her status? Use your answer to comment on the way perspective affects the reader’s experience of a story. How is this effect reflected in other stories like “Scars” and “Ruler of the Winds and Sands”?

Using the stories in this collection, differentiate revenge and justice. Do any of the characters in the book choose to seek justice over revenge? How do their outcomes help to define Chung’s position on the ethics of revenge?

Does Chung propose alternatives to upward mobility in any of her stories? What should people aspire to other than the accumulation of wealth, which is shown to corrupt and alienate people from one another?

How do the stories in this collection examine the intersections of gender- and class-based oppression? How do these stories deepen your sense of intersectionality in fiction?

How do the stories in this collection approach disability representation? Do the characters with disabilities accurately and sensitively represent the experience of having disabilities? Or are these characters and the disabilities they experience reduced to narrative devices in the collection?

How does the title story represent the larger thesis of the collection? Find ways to relate “Cursed Bunny” to as many of the other stories in the book as possible.