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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 does Papa Legba sing to Fabiolain Chapter 8?

2. In Chapter 2, who are Fabiola's cousins?

3. Why does Fabiola let a moment of awkwardness spread between her and Kasim in Chapter 9?

4. What does Chantal say in "Chantal's Story" that she does not learn in class?

5. In Chapter 1, where are Fabiola and her mother going?

Short Essay Questions

1. What question does Fabiola ask Kasim that makes him angry in Chapter 11? Why does it?

2. Where does Fabiola go in Chapter 15? What does she do as a result?

3. In "Matant Jo's Story," how did Matant Jo come over to America? Who of the girls did she bring with her?

4. At the nightclub, what does Fabiola remember about the boys back home? What does she think when she meets Dray?

5. What had Fabiola and her mother done as Fabiola says in Chapter 7 to protect the family? When had they started doing this?

6. Who does Fabiola meet in Chapter 6? How does this person describe her cousins?

7. What does Fabiola tell her cousins about her mother in Chapter 2? What do her cousins say?

8. Who does Fabiola ask for help in the Detroit airport in Chapter 1? What is she told?

9. Who picks Fabiola up in Chapter 9? What do they do together?

10. What happens in the New York Airport in Chapter 1? What had Fabiola and her mother been planning?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Fabiola contrasts her experience in Haiti against what she finds in America when she first arrives. As she continues through the novel, she continues contrasting and finding her homeland in relief against her new home. How does she reveal that Haiti and America are different or similar to one another? What is it that makes up these differences or similarities? How is her interpretation a part of the process of becoming something new in a new place?

Essay Topic 2

When Dray dies, in the next chapter, "Drayton's Story," he says that you realize after death you have died before and recalls how he previously died while running with a bullet to the head (313). How do his lives and deaths connect to the larger struggle of systematic racism? Tie his story to one other character's story. How are they fighting against something larger than themselves? What is the novel saying with this circularity about the history of racism and systematic struggle?

Essay Topic 3

In Chapter Twenty One, Fabiola dreams of the history of 8800 American Street, and then in the next chapter the detailed history of 8800 American Street is revealed. What does this structure say about how Fabiola learns the stories revealed in the novel? Are they actually being spoken to her or does she learn them in other ways? If she learns them in other ways, what are these ways of knowing? Choose three of the backstories to develop an argument about how she knows these.

Finally, what is the novel saying by having these stories revealed in this way? What is Fabiola's role related to the other characters of the novel and to the reader?

(see the answer keys)

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