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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 Fabiola think about 8800 American Street in Chapter 21?

2. What does Fabiola tell Kasim in Chapter 22?

3. Where do Fabiola and the cousins go in Chapter 24?

4. In Chapter 32, what does Detective Shawn tell Fabiola?

5. What does Kasim say he was called as a kid?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Fabiola tell to Dray in Chapter 26? What does she intend to do with him doing this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Where do the cousins and Fabiola go in Chapter 23? What does Dray come by and do?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When Fabiola first comes to America, she feels as if she leaves her mother, her heart, behind. How does her feeling towards her mother change in the novel? How does Fabiola come to realize throughout the novel that her mother has raised her? How is the way she is raised compared to her cousins show a cultural difference between immigrants and first generation immigrants?

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 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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