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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 made Robby good at this job?

2. What is Robby's degree in?

3. Who shot Stavros that he went down?

4. What does John say doesn't feel right about this trip?

5. What does John have to go through at the prison?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Robby say about his educate in his speech?

2. What pact did the robbers make, and how did it get broken?

3. What did Robby and Michael Dukes and Cecil Rice do sloppily while they were getting away?

4. How does Robby say the prison environment changes after his appeals are all turned down?

5. How does Robby characterize his work with autistic kids?

6. How does John characterize his revision to Robby's story.

7. What did Robby and Cecil argue about?

8. Why did Robby and his crew turn from drugs to crime?

9. What does Robby say about educate for prisoners?

10. How did Robby and his crew pull off the robbery?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the role of the women in "Brothers and Keepers", and how would the action and ideas in the book be portrayed differently if they were described from a woman's perspective? How would John's mother, or Judy, or Tanya, tell this story? How does John include their point of view?

Essay Topic 2

How has American culture changed since Wideman wrote his book? Research the incarceration of blacks and describe what has changed, if anything, in the system Wideman describes.

Essay Topic 3

What does John and Robby's blackness have to do with "Brothers and Keepers"? How does it affect their situation, and where, if at all, do they escape from it, or evade its influence? How is blackness defined in the book, and how do John and Robby rework the definition so that it accommodates them?

(see the answer keys)

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