Structure

Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of letters and responses from Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar Column. On the introductory page of Part I, “It Was Always Only Us,” Strayed explains what the reader will find inside the book: “It’s a selection of Dear Sugar columns. Many were originally published on TheRumpus.net. Others appear here for the first time . . . Most people who sent me letters didn’t know I was Cheryl Strayed and likewise most of the letter writers were entirely anonymous to me. This book is a collection of intimate exchanges between strangers” (11). Rather than presenting these selected letters in order of their reception, the pieces enclosed within Tiny Beautiful Things are organized according to their themes. The text therefore imposes a structural scaffolding on the collected letters so as to guide the reader’s navigation through them.

Tiny Beautiful Things is organized into...