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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. Which of the following nicknames does Asha carry?

2. Which of Asha’s relatives walks on all fours?

3. Under which charity’s banner is the school where Manju works?

4. To what group does Meena belong?

5. As what does the text gloss the term “motu”?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Sunil know that almonds have ripened?

2. Why do Sunil and Kalu like to look at their slum from a pile of rubble?

3. Why is the wedding Asha and her family attend in her hometown subdued?

4. Why does Rahul decline to help the injured scavenger he sees beside the road?

5. Why had the women of Asha’s hometown esteemed her in her youth?

6. What familial duty does Manju carry out at the wedding in her mother’s hometown?

7. To what does Meena’s family ascribe her death?

8. What causes Asha to feel “like a giantess, coming home” (135)?

9. What causes Sunil’s sister to become bald?

10. For what reasons does Asha have sex with men not her husband?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Boo repeatedly uses the word “tension” in the text. Explicate its various uses and overall meaning within the book.

Essay Topic 2

Consider the juxtaposition of Asha’s family’s expectations in her home region and her own in Mumbai. What emerges as the most prominent feature of that juxtaposition? What makes it most prominent, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Readerly attention focuses on the following comment: “India still made a person know his place, and wishing things different struck Abdul as a childish pastime, like trying to write your name in a bowl of melted kulfi” (15). What might attract attention thereto, and why might it do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 531 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample