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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. How old was Peter Balakian when his aunts began taking him on the house-viewing expeditions?

2. What meat did the Balakian family frequently eat for dinner?

3. At what time did Balakian and his friend Ed Harrison routinely sneak out of their houses to explore the town?

4. How many minutes were Balakian's phone calls restricted to when he was twelve?

5. Whose voice did Balakian describe as hitting him "as broken glass under a tire"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What impression did the writer, William Saroyan, make on Balakian during the party at his aunt's apartment?

2. How did Balakian's mother differ from most of the other mothers on Crabtree Lane in Tenafly?

3. What was Balakian's reaction to the film, The Graduate?

4. In what ways did life at Auntie Anna's and Uncle Steve's house differ from life in the Balakian household?

5. When the Balakian family was preparing to move to another town, what was the deeper significance of Balakian's mother's insistence that her son not get too attached to any one place?

6. What were some of the reasons Balakian likely did not seek out information about Armenia while he was still in college?

7. Why did Balakian's father send him the newspaper clipping about the Armenian Soviet republic and how did Peter react?

8. How did sports help heal the rift between Balakian and his father?

9. Did Balakian's father have a strong connection to Constantinople, and how did that reflect the city's tumultuous history?

10. How did Balakian react to seeing his father perform emergency medical care to the heart attack victim at the football game?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Balakian's grandmother Nafina frequently had dreams that she insisted were prophetic. How did most of the family members react to these dreams? How did Peter react to them? In what way was Nafina still tied to traditional Armenian culture through these dreams? Did Peter's father reject these prophetic dreams because he was a scientifically-minded person or because he wanted to be an assimilated American?

Essay Topic 2

Balakian's aunts were deeply critical of American suburban life, believing that it lacked culture and refinement. Write a compare and contrast essay looking at both the attitudes of the family members toward the suburbs versus the city and the realities they encountered in their separate worlds. Include ways in which the cities and suburbs were similar as well as ways in which they were markedly different. Compare the cultural offerings as well as the sense of community in the two areas.

Essay Topic 3

Balakian did not learn about the Armenian genocide or his own family's experiences until he sought out that information as an adult. Even then, some family members questioned what he was doing. Did his family do him a disservice by hiding the truth from him for so many years? Would knowing the past have enabled him to have a different, deeper understanding of the ways his family members lived their lives in America? Or did keeping the truth from him enable him to have a normal American childhood before delving into the past on his own? Did his family's "protection" of him give him a solid ground on which to stand while confronting the horrific events of the past?

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