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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through "My Mother's Life".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What unusual career move did Patricia make in the early 1980s?
(a) She became a chiropractor.
(b) She started working in a factory.
(c) She became a secretary.
(d) She became a housekeeper.

2. What happened before the author could ask Zaheera out?
(a) She was captured by Zulu extremists.
(b) She married her boyfriend, Gary.
(c) She moved to America.
(d) The author was sentenced to work in the salt mines.

3. Why was the author not allowed to eat food when visiting Temperance Noah's second family?
(a) Temperance's second family was full of bad cooks.
(b) Patricia wanted to show off her own cooking skills instead.
(c) Patricia was worried that Temperance's second family would try to poison them.
(d) Temperance's second family was too poor to buy food.

4. Which racial group was most common in Soweto, according to the author?
(a) Indian people.
(b) Black people.
(c) Soweto was fully integrated.
(d) White people.

5. What reason did Patricia give when the author asked why they did not move to Switzerland?
(a) She believed South Africa was too good for them.
(b) Switzerland refused to accept them.
(c) Switzerland would be even worse.
(d) She did not want to leave South Africa.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why was the author difficult for his caretakers to handle when he was very little?

2. What crime did the author's parents commit when they had him?

3. What element of American culture does the author equate with freedom in the story, "Go Hitler!"?

4. At the end of the foreword to the story "Born a Crime," the author wrote that apartheid would be easy for occupants of which country to understand?

5. How did the author's mother save him from the threatening men on the mini-bus?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 364 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample