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

2. In what year did Balakian first discover a love for poetry while in English class?

3. What is pakht?

4. Where did the Ottoman Turks originally come from?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How did Balakian's memorial poem for his grandmother reflect his Armenian past?

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

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

5. Why did Balakian react so strongly to Allen Ginsberg's reading of his poem "Kaddish"?

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

7. Why did Balakian's father insist his son leave the public schools and attend a private school?

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

9. What did the phrase "the old country" mean to Balakian as a child?

10. How did Balakian's father's fear of germs, as well as other family member's obsession with health and safety, reflect their experiences during the genocide?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Turkish government has never apologized for the Armenian genocide and the world has moved on. What impact, if any, would an official Turkish apology have on the Armenian people today? Is it possible for an apology to be delivered a century later? How would the Armenian people benefit from an apology before the world? Would it free them? Would it free the Turks?

Essay Topic 2

Balakian's grandmother initially sought compensation from the Turkish government for her family's sufferings. How important is compensation to the victims of state-sponsored terror? Can any compensation be sufficient or does the compensation have a deeper, more symbolic meaning? Did the grandmother's filing of the documents help her process the events? Can there ever be sufficient compensation for the Armenian people, especially almost a century after the genocide?

Essay Topic 3

Even after the genocide was over, the Armenian people continued to suffer, not least because there was no acknowledgment of their suffering. Write an essay exploring how they continued to suffer at the hands of the Turks in the aftermath. How did the Turks prevent them from reestablishing a free nation? Why did the world stand by as they continued to lose land? What is the current situation of Armenia and how has that nation provided Armenians around the world with some hope?

(see the answer keys)

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