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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the author afraid of?
(a) The cellar.
(b) The barber.
(c) The "chicken lady."
(d) The principal.

2. What language was commonly used in the author's neighborhood?
(a) Hebrew.
(b) Polish.
(c) Yiddish.
(d) Russian.

3. What was Mr. Solovey's jacket always covered with?
(a) Hair.
(b) Cigarette ash.
(c) Dandruff.
(d) Face powder.

4. What emotion did the author feel when he was working during his sixteenth summer?
(a) Fear.
(b) Happy.
(c) Dread.
(d) Indifference.

5. What kind of look did New York City have during the summer nights?
(a) An ethereal look.
(b) An unstitched look.
(c) A coarse look.
(d) A mysterious look.

6. How did the author feel it meant to be a Jew?
(a) They were free in their part of town.
(b) They were superior to the other religions.
(c) They were the most choice of people.
(d) Their very existance was questioned.

7. What political party was said to be lighthearted?
(a) Socialist.
(b) Democrat.
(c) Communist
(d) Republican.

8. What did the boy do to win over the neighbor girl's mother?
(a) Offer to become a Jew.
(b) Pay her bills.
(c) Fix her leaky pipes.
(d) Cook her dinner.

9. On Fifth Avenue, the author found something he was surprised by. What was it?
(a) A painting of his grandparents.
(b) A painting of his home country.
(c) A painting of his mother.
(d) A painting of a nude woman.

10. Why did the author daydream of Mrs. Solovey?
(a) She had a mysterious life.
(b) She hypnotized him.
(c) He secretly loved her.
(d) He couldn't get past the scar on her face.

11. Something frightening happened to the author when we went to get coal one winter day -- what was it?
(a) He was beat up in the cellar.
(b) Bats flew out of the cellar when he opened the door.
(c) He thought he heard someone.
(d) He got locked in the cellar.

12. Who's name was on the sign the boys pasted to the outside wall of a house on Chester Street?
(a) Dazzy Vance.
(b) Babe Ruth.
(c) Cy Young.
(d) Eddie Cicotte.

13. Where were political rival meetings held?
(a) Pitkin Street.
(b) The drugstore.
(c) The vegetarian restaurant.
(d) Underground.

14. What had the author's final paper been about?
(a) A violin.
(b) His relationship with his mother.
(c) His Socialist party friends.
(d) Mrs. Solovey's suicide.

15. What hadn't the author learned yet when he had the discussion in a foreign language with Mrs. Solovey?
(a) Irregular verbs.
(b) Equatives.
(c) Reular verbs.
(d) Conjugated verbs.

Short Answer Questions

1. What word does the author use to describe many of the places in Pages 77-109?

2. Who did the shacks on Livonia Avenue start filling up with during the depression?

3. When the author was a young man, who did he think about after he turned the light out at night?

4. Whose house did the author associate with being the furthest from home?

5. What could you see someone doing into the late hours of dusk in Brownsville?

(see the answer keys)

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