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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 Matant Jo tell Dray to do in Chapter 19?

2. Where do the cousins and Matant Jo go in Chapter 22?

3. Who does Fabiola tell Dray she knows in Chapter 26?

4. What does Fabiola find out about her education in Chapter 21?

5. Who comes by the house in Chapter 21?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do Kasim and Fabiola do in Chapter 28 at Kasim's house? What does Fabiola tell Kasim at the end of the Chapter?

2. In Chapter 31, what has happened to Dray? How is Bad Leg related to this?

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

4. Why does Donna say she is aggressive towards Imani in Chapter 17? What does Fabiola realize about the sisters?

5. What happens to Donna in the evening in Chapter 23? What does Fabiola think about America?

6. In "Drayton's Story," what does Dray reveal about his connection to Phillip? What had he felt because of that connection?

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

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

9. What does Fabiola dream in Chapter 21? Why does she dream this?

10. What does Fabiola tell the Francois sisters in Chapter 27? How does she convince them not to do this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Violence is a part of the neighborhood at 8800 American Street and a reality of life for Fabiola back in Haiti.

In the face of the threat of violence, how do characters adapt to survive? Choose three characters to compare their journeys and how they deal with the reality of their lives in the places they experience violence.

Tie their journeys to a larger discussion of how violence is represented similarly or differently in American and Haiti and where in each of these places, the source of the violence comes from.

Essay Topic 2

In Chapter Thirty Two, Pri asks Fabiola about her Vodou items, and Fabiola says, 'It is my life" (321). What does she mean by this? How is this idea shown throughout the novel? How is Vodou, and its philosophy, make up Fabiola's character? Go through the novel and find at least three examples to show how Vodou is a part of Fabiola's life, and how each example shows how it is a part of her.

Wrap this into a claim: what is the novel saying about the role of spirituality?

Essay Topic 3

In the beginning of the novel, Fabiola is separated from her mother. By the end of the novel, she is on her way to be reunited with her mother, but the novel does not actually include her being reunited. Why does the novel not show this reunification? What is the novel instead about through the process of Fabiola returning to her mother?

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