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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 advantages has the author's son had growing up?

2. What is "The Dream" that Coats refers to?

3. Which writer inspired the author as a young man?

4. For whom was the author's son named?

5. Why does the author feel the interview at the beginning of his memoir was a failure?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is meant by "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?"

2. How does the author compare his childhood to that of his son?

3. What revelation does the author have about the European perception of Africans during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

4. Why didn't the author console his son when Samori grieved over the release of Michael Brown's killer?

5. What influence did Malcom X have on the author as a young man?

6. What conflicting thoughts does the author have about the civil rights movement of the 1960s?

7. What does the author mean when he says the school system and the streets are "two arms of the same beast"?

8. What role did violence play in the author's childhood?

9. For what reasons did the author's father punish him and why?

10. What role did religion play in the author's childhood?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author speaks often of a body that is easily broken. The theme of impending violence is an undercurrent that runs throughout the memoir. Is the author referring solely to physical violence or to a deeper emotional state of being? Based off of the author's observations, which might be more damaging in the long run - the threat of physical violence or a constant undercurrent of emotional upheaval?

Essay Topic 2

When the killer of Michael Brown was set free, Samori (the author's son) was overwrought with anger and sorrow. The author could not bring himself to console his son, although he did sit with him as Samori grieved. Why did Coates find himself unwilling to console his son? Why were things "not going to be okay"? What lesson was Coates trying to teach his son in that moment?

Essay Topic 3

Malcom X was one of the greatest, if the not the greatest, literary influence in the author's life. Malcom X was assassinated in February of 1965. How might this knowledge have shaped the influence Malcom X had over the author, who was born ten years after Malcom's death? Using your own knowledge of world history, what aspects of Malcolm X's beliefs might have shaped the author's depiction of the racist role of America?

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