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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 hope does the author have for his son?

2. What does the author wish he had done differently with the woman who pushed his son?

3. From what does the author draw joy?

4. What was the outcome of the trial on page 112?

5. How does the author describe Prince Jones?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is the author's fear of his son seeing him arrested greater than his fear of being arrested?

2. What lesson does the mother of the boy on page 112 (Lucia McBath) try to impart to the author's son?

3. How did the author's trip to Paris affect his view of what it means to live in a black body?

4. How is the author disappointed by the lack of education during his Civil War battlefield tour?

5. Why are black children told to be "twice as good"?

6. Why did the thought of encountering the Prince George's County patrol officer frighten the author?

7. What role has fear played in Samori's (the author's son) life?

8. What reasons does the author give for the anger of the man who was having his home repossessed?

9. How does the author contrast black and white societies?

10. What impact does the death of Prince Jones have on the author?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

The author often refers to white people as those who "believe themselves white." He also speaks often of dissociation. How might the concept of race and dissociation be related in America today? Is race a genetic or social construct?

Essay Topic 3

The moment Samori realized the death of Michael Brown would not be avenged; the instant that a four-year-old (Dr.) Mable Jones was pulled away from the front of the bus; the split-second the author realized through the medium of television that there was another world outside of his inner-city Baltimore - what do all of these points in time have in common? What one lesson did each person learn in his or her critical moment? How might other black Americans have faced similar racial epiphanies?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,335 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample