Reader’s Discussion Guide

Raising Athena: A Mother and Daughter Attend West Point Thirty Years Apart

by MyLinh Brewster Shattan

About the Book

The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation of MyLinh Brewster Shattan’s Raising Athena, an intimate memoir that traces two generations of women at West Point— the author’s own path, beginning in 1987, and her daughter Cara’s, beginning in 2017. Weaving personal narrative with history and philosophy, the book follows a mother watching her daughter choose the life she once chose herself, and asks what has changed for women in the military, what hasn’t, and what it costs to serve.

About the Author

MyLinh Brewster Shattan is a West Point graduate and Army veteran. Raising Athena is her first book.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

The prologue opens with the author’s father, Don Brewster, boarding the last official helicopter out of Saigon. The author writes that she “could not escape the past any more than my father could escape.” How does that inheritance shape the rest of the book — and how does it echo, or contrast, in Cara’s own choice to go to West Point?
In the Author’s Note, MyLinh writes: “In land navigation, if the map doesn’t match the ground, it isn’t the ground that’s wrong. The map isn’t wrong either; you just haven’t figured out where you are.” What do you make of this as a way of describing new challenges she faces as a mother? Where else in the book does this idea of the map not matching the ground show up?
Cara’s own college essay, reproduced in “Boots and Bridges,” centers on her mother’s old combat boots and a woman she met in Normandy who thanked her family for their service. What does the essay reveal about how Cara understood duty before she’d ever worn a uniform herself?
In “Dear Cara,” the author writes of seeing her daughter in uniform: “Athena sprang fully formed in body armor from the head of Zeus… This fighter, this warrior-in-training, appeared as Athena had in the myth, from some divine wellspring.” Reread this passage (“Dear Cara,” p. 20). What does this image let the author say about her daughter that a more literal description couldn’t?
“Learning to Run” tells the story of the author falling out of formation runs at Beast Barracks — until classmates Cashman and Mintz help her pull through. What does this chapter suggest about the difference between individual toughness and being carried by a team? Where do you see Cara relying on a similar kind of support?
In Part Two, the chapter “Why They Serve” gathers a cast who met at a family wedding — the deadly Mosquito, the Cajun, the Baker, the Professor, the Volunteers — each with a different path to (or away from) military service, from Korea, Vietnam, Germany, and the United States. Which of these figures interested you most as a reader, and what did their story add to the book’s larger question of why anyone serves?
The author sets two class mottos side by side: her own, Class of 1991’s “Duty Shall Be Done,” and Cara’s, Class of 2021’s “Until the Battle Is Won.” In the same chapter, she writes that the helicopter — which carried her father to safety, helped medevac PFC Danny Gronde and Heath McClung, and reappears flying a game ball over Michie Stadium in the epilogue — came to mean “fleeing and freedom” rather than just “flying and firepower.” (*“Duty Shall Be Done,” p. 155-156 ) How does one image carry such different weight across generations, continents, and branches of this family’s story?
Each of the book’s three parts opens with an epigraph about the Odyssey. Part One has the quote, “In silence you must bear a world of pain.” Part Two has, “Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier.” And Part Three draws from Cavafy’s poem, “Always keep Ithaka in your mind / Reaching her is your destiny.” Why do you think the author chose to frame the book’s structure this way?
In the chapter titled “A Superpower,” the author describes the West Point crest itself — Athena’s helmet and sword, worn on every cadet’s uniform — and writes, “The sword is wielded with care.” What does the pairing of wisdom and warfare in the Academy’s own symbolism suggest about how the book portrays strength, and how might that symbolism reflect women’s more recent experience at West Point?
In “Turnaround Point,” the author quotes Cavafy’s “Ithaka” at length: “it is ultimately not the destination but the experiences along the way that enrich our lives.” How does this idea reframe the mother-daughter journey the book has been tracing? Does it change how you read the ending?
The book documents real, concrete changes for women between 1987 and Cara’s years — mandatory boxing extended to women in 2016, the gender-neutral ACFT debate, improved sexual harassment reporting. Which of these changes surprised you most? What hasn’t changed?
“Final Roll Call” names graduates lost to combat, accidents, and suicide, including 1LT Laura Walker, the first woman West Point graduate to die in combat, and the author’s classmate Bill Hecker. How does the book hold grief alongside its larger argument about duty and service? How does this passage reveal fear as the price of service, especially for a parent of a soldier?
The epilogue closes not with resolution but with continuation — Norah earning her Sapper Tab, Cara preparing to become a captain, the author’s mother passing during the book’s publication, eight family members serving on active duty. What does it mean that the book ends this way rather than with a clean conclusion?
What does this book suggest about what it means to raise a child toward something difficult and uncertain, rather than protect them from it?

MyLinh Shattan

Reader’s Discussion Guide

About the Book

About the Author

Questions and Topics for Discussion

Suggested Reading

MyLinh Shattan