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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. What is the name of the government program that allows a longtime, hard-core Viet Cong to switch sides?

2. In Chapter 2, where were the narrator’s parrots and grandmother, when her grandfather asked her to go talk to Mr. Green?

3. In Chapter 7, what was the translated name of the restaurant owned by a man who was having an affair with the narrator’s wife?

4. Where does the Chapter 1 narrator’s ex-wife live?

5. Where does Miss Noi go to live with Fontenot?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Doctor Joseph tell the narrator to do to stop the man who is having an affair with the narrator’s wife?

2. What is so special about apples for Miss Noi?

3. Why did it take so long to get Francine and her mother out of Vietnam?

4. What does the narrator in Chapter 1 do during the war?

5. How does Mr. Green die in Chapter 2?

6. What was in the room behind a bead curtain in Chapter 2?

7. Who is Thap?

8. When and how did Khanh’s wife’s father die?

9. What does Thieu remember about the time when Saigon fell?

10. What does Thieu try to interest in son in doing when Bill is bored?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The characters in the novel were immigrants from Vietnam.

a. What types of struggles did these immigrants have as they adjusted to living in the United States?

b. Did money or a lack of money affect how easily or difficult it was to assimilate into American society?

c. What were some of the ways that the characters adjusted to their new lives?

d. Why was it easier for some to adjust than others?

Essay Topic 2

In Chapter 5, Thieu’s son is growing up American. What is his son’s name? How does Bill dress? What are Bill’s interests? How does Bill respond when his father speaks Vietnamese? How does Thieu’s attempt to interest Bill in a Vietnamese boyhood tradition succeed? Is Bill more Vietnamese or more American?

Essay Topic 3

In Chapter 1, Thap reminds the narrator of a ghost. What do the Vietnamese believe about ghosts? What is there about Thap that reminds the narrator of a ghost? Why does the narrator decide that Thap is not a ghost?

(see the answer keys)

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