Disgrace contains explicit sexual violence, including rape, as well as other violence against humans and animals. It will be necessary to have serious conversations with the class addressing things these subjects ahead of reading the book. The teacher should prepare the students for all of this sensitive and potentially very personal and traumatic content, reinforcing that the classroom, above all, will remain a place for respectful and understanding discourse.
The novel also contains thematic content related to race, specifically the systematic oppression of Black South Africans during apartheid and the aftermath when apartheid ended in the mid-1990s. Discussing this history with the...
