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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How do the girls respond when the girls receive compliments from the Italian boys on their stoops?
(a) When did we become beautiful?
(b) They laugh at the boys.
(c) What made you nice?
(d) Who are you?

2. Why do the family and friends who come to stay with the girls and their families leave for other cities?
(a) To see more of America.
(b) For work.
(c) They tire of living in cramped conditions in Queens.
(d) They go to stay with other family members.

3. What two groups does the narrator say eats the same lunch?
(a) The students at her school and those in homeless shelters.
(b) The students at her school and inmates in prisons.
(c) The students and teachers at her school.
(d) The students at her school and the President of the United States.

4. When the white boys try to be gently intimate, how do the girls NOT react?
(a) Some girls reject the closeness.
(b) Some girls give in to the closeness.
(c) Some girls realize they want the closeness, and anyone will do.
(d) Some girls realize they want the closeness, and this boy is who she has been searching for her whole life.

5. What is the example given by the narrator for how the girls know how to keep family secrets?
(a) They try to forget their family secrets.
(b) They lie and say their immediate family members are the only ones who live in their homes.
(c) They pretend they do not know anything about their families.
(d) They often blackmail each other to keep each other quiet.

Short Answer Questions

1. When the narrator and her friends play dress-up in a store with beautiful clothes, what does a store clerk think is happening?

2. In Part One, Lunchroom, who is cursing at Trish?

3. In Part One, Musical Chairs, the narrator tells of how the teachers are notorious for what?

4. When the white parents consider the brown girls and their families the good, hardworking immigrants, the girls realize what about their own families?

5. In Part One, Brown, the narrator describes the various shades of brown of her and other brown girls. What is NOT a way she describes her and her friends’ skin tones?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the boys in Brown Boys?

2. How do the girls change once they begin attending the high school for the arts?

3. How do the girls feel when family members and friends leave their homes for other cities?

4. Why do the brown girls like the other boys better than the brown boys?

5. How do the girls respond when asked what they want to be when they grow up?

6. In Western Epistemology, what do the girls learn at school in honors classes?

7. In Part 2, Western Epistemology, why are the girls leery about being outside their school near the fence?

8. How does life change for the girls who attend the public arts school?

9. How do the girls handle the situation with Joseph Justin O’Brien?

10. Why might the narrator repeat that the homes the girls live in are neat but hidden, peripheral?

(see the answer keys)

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