Exit West

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What descriptions might one use appropriately for the terms refugee and migrant? What does it mean to seek asylum or sanctuary?

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to think about the official definitions of these terms. Who is included? Who is left out? They can then apply them as they make their way through the text.

• The United Nations has definitions for refugee and migrant.
• There is a differentiation between asylum-seekers and refugees, per Amnesty International's descriptions of the terms.

2. What is magical realism? Who are some of the writers associated with this genre? What characteristics are usually mentioned in conjunction with magical realism?

Teaching Suggestion: Introduce students to this literary genre so that they are prepared to discuss the role of the doors within the novel. Works of magical realism, while set in worlds recognizably our own, contain elements of magic or the supernatural that characters treat as normal or unremarkable. In Exit West, the genre of magical realism provides a unique lens for examining the refugee experience and the effects of globalization.

• “Magical Realism: Definitions” from the English Department at Arizona State University offers a compilation of descriptions of magical realism by writers and scholars.
• In this 3-minute Big Think interview, Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers an explication of magical realism.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Moving to a new home in a new place is often a formative event in a person’s life. Have you ever had to move? What challenges did the move present? What emotions did you experience leaving one home and going to another? If you have not experienced moving to a new home, reflect on the challenges that might accompany moving.

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to think broadly about migration. Migration is a main concern of this novel and is closely entwined with its themes of Navigating the Challenges of Globalization. One wealthy character at the end of the novel who had never left home remarks that “it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it” (Chapter 10). Students might add this quote to notes or a reading journal for reflection and predictions.

Differentiation Suggestion: For visual learners and English learners, students could demonstrate their understanding of how migration affects populations by writing or drawing Headlines, which could be posted in the classroom as anchor displays for the remainder of the unit. Six-Word Summaries (see “Writing Across the Science or Social Studies Curriculum” on this methods explainer) are another possible option.