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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where did Nicole take refuge from her bullying classmates?

2. How does Nicole say her parents returned to religion?

3. How does Nicole characterize her response to the racial slurs she heard as a kid?

4. What did Nicole ask the adoption agency for?

5. When did Washington state place adoption records in the public record?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happened when Nicole’s birth mother tried to get in touch with her?

2. What does the title of the memoir refer to?

3. How did Nicole’s family information stack up against her husband Dan’s family’s information?

4. What does Nicole tell of her adoptive parents’ story?

5. How does Nicole describe her relationship with the idea of her birth parents?

6. What is the story Nicole Chung says she was told about her adoption?

7. What assurance did Nicole and Dan receive from Brenda?

8. What strategies did Nicole develop as a young child, to combat other students’ race-based hostility toward her?

9. How did Nicole feel about opening the question of her birth family?

10. How does Nicole explain her parents’ refusal to delve into the complexities presented by her race?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate the ending of All You Can Ever Know. Does it ring true to you? Does it successfully resolve the problems and tensions that preceded it? What would you change, if anything? What are you left wishing for closure on, if anything?

Essay Topic 2

Nicole describes a number of experiences of racism, and she says that she feels an obligation, in a divided America, to speak up when she sees racist ideas raise their heads. What does Nicole’s book tell us about handling racism, and about reacting to it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Nicole keeping her accounts of racism general and at a distance?

Essay Topic 3

When is All You Can Ever Know most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 994 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample