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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 also shows up at the diner in Chapter 22?

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

3. Why was Adrian fired from his Ford job?

4. What does Imani joke about Fabiola in Chapter 20?

5. In Chapter 31, what does Fabiola remember at the beginning of the Chapter?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Kasim give Imani in Chapter 20? What does she tell him about them hanging out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. What does Fabiola tell her cousins in Chapter 27 about her and her mother? How does she connect this to Bag Leg?

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

10. What does Fabiola see in Chapter 29 at the party behind the police tape? How does she feel about Kasim at the end?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Donna and Dray's love for one another is complicated, while Fabiola and Kasim's relationship is fairly straightforward, but ends tragically. What role does love play for for these couples? What is their relationship with one another? How does it allow them to feel or change? How do they play out their feelings in other parts of their lives in their relationships?

Finally, answer in an analytical claim: why does the novel contrast these two examples of romantic relationships?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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