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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 realization does the author have about his university education?

2. What did the author's parents teach him about religion?

3. How does the author describe his experience in the Baltimore public schools?

4. To whom is the memoir addressed?

5. What does the author describe as the "enemy of art, courageous thinking and honest writing"?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. According to the author, how have American police departments been given the right to destroy black bodies without the fear of recrimination?

4. Why did the author's mother encourage him to write?

5. How does the author use poetry to express his thoughts?

6. How important were books to the author as he was growing up?

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

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

9. According to the author, how has the lack of fathers and father-figures affected black children?

10. How does research and study affect the author as a young man?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

Fear is a recurring theme in the author's memoir. What role does fear play in the lives of black Americans? How has fear preserved the author's body? Has fear repressed the author? What are some of the positive and negative effects of the fear he has experienced throughout his life?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout history, defining oneself as Black was a matter of both appearance as well as culture. There were people who chose to define themselves as White/Caucasian as a means of improving their social status. Describe how the author defines “blackness” in current American society. How did his experiences with other people, such as the girl from California who had relatives in India, the girl with dreadlocks raised by a Jewish mother, and the Howard professor who was in an open marriage to a white woman affect his view of what it meant to be a Black person?

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