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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. Who comes by the house in Chapter 21?

2. In "Drayton's Story," what does Dray say Q did?

3. In "Drayton's Story," who does Dray say he accidentally shot?

4. In Chapter 32, who does Fabiola see in the background of old Francois family photos?

5. Who is the older man in Chapter 21?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "8800 American Street," what happens with the house? What sets up at the crossroads of American Street and Joy Road?

2. What do they see when they arrive back home in Chapter 30? What does Fabiola do?

3. What do the Francois sisters intend in Chapter 26 to pay back Q? How does Fabiola feel about this?

4. What does Fabiola prepare in Chapter 23? How does she change it from how it is supposed to be?

5. Why does Donna break it off with Dray in Chapter 19? What does she do with him?

6. In Chapter 30, what does Dray do to Fabiola? What does she tell him to do?

7. What does Fabiola find out about her cousins in Chapter 21? Why have they done this?

8. In Chapter 22, who does Fabiola ignore? Why does she ignore him?

9. In Chapter 32, what does Fabiola think as she looks at the Michigan landscape? What does she say about the American people?

10. In Chapter 31 where does Fabiola say she was when the Haiti earthquake hit? How does she relate this to when she opens her eyes in the present?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When Fabiola arrives, she is an immigrant with all of the American behaviors and customs unfamiliar to her. By the end of the novel, she has changed into something different. What is her transformation in the novel? How does she become the "Fourth Bee"? How does she become "American"? Finally, how does her transformation include her previous Haitian identity with her new self, and what does this say about living in a new place as an immigrant?

Essay Topic 2

Fabiola can be seen as taking on the traits of the lwas in different parts of the novel, the structure of a crossroad, leading into vengeance, and finally death.

How does the structure of the novel according to the lwas relate to how Fabiola thinks about the earthquake in Haiti in the last several chapters? What is this saying that an earthquake allows to happen or what happens after the quake?

Essay Topic 3

At the end of the novel, Fabiola says, "I realize that everyone is climbing their own mountain here in America. They are tall and mighty and they live in hearts and everyday lives of the people. And I am not a pebble in the valley. I am a mountain" (324).

From this quote, what are the mountains in the lives of all of the characters? What is Fabiola's mountain? How do she, and each of them climb it in the novel? Choose two characters in addition to her for a four-page analysis with textual examples. Finally, what does this quote say about what it means to be American or live in America?

(see the answer keys)

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