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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. How does Layla contact David the first time?

2. What is a “desi”?

3. What distinguishing mark does the guard have, who intervenes to get Layla out of trouble on the train?

4. Who was interned at Manzanar during World War II?

5. What characteristic summarizes the Director’s appearance in Layla’s eyes?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Layla do when she cannot sleep?

2. How does Layla’s approach to the relocation differ from her parents’?

3. Who is the White Rose, and what does she mean to Layla?

4. How do Layla's parents get notification that they are being relocated?

5. What danger does Layla put herself in while getting home?

6. How does Layla describe Noor’s arrest?

7. How does Layla connect with Ayesha?

8. What are the different frames of reference by which Layla and Ayesha try to make the internment make sense?

9. How do Layla and her family arrive at Camp Mobius?

10. What is happening around Layla Amin at the beginning of Internment?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When is Internment 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?

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate Internment as a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age narrative. What are the challenges Layla and Ayesha and Soheil endure, to perform rites of passage in this novel? How do they overcome these challenges, and what do they learn at each stage? Are they complete human beings at the end of the novel, or do they die too early to learn all the lessons a person would need to learn?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the difference between writing a novel and performing activism. How are they similar, how are they different? Is Ahmed’s book a form of activism? What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing a novel as a form of activism?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,015 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample