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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. When the girls give a rude response or laugh to the white boys’ compliments, how do the boys NOT react?

2. What does the narrator say about the native tongues of the girls in “Art”?

3. Often the brown mothers ask if the girls are listening, as they seem to be ignoring their mothers. What are the girls thinking but not saying?

4. How does Part One, Bras begin?

5. In Everything We Ever Wanted, the girls are now how old?

Short Essay Questions

1. In what ways are the brown girls good?

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

3. What takes place in Great Expectations?

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

5. Why are some of the girls bra experts?

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

7. How do the Italian boys change throughout Part One?

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

9. In Your Own Kind, what are the reasons are given for why the girls should not date outside of their own community?

10. Why do the brown girls call their teachers terrible names?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Trish is the only brown girl that the reader knows by name. How is this important? Why might Daphne Palasi Andreades have chosen to only have one named character, with the character being a figment of the girls' imaginations throughout much of Brown Girls? What role does Trish play in the novel? How is it fitting that she is mentioned at the very end of the book?

Essay Topic 2

Brown Girls is a coming-of-age novel. How so? How can the reader relate to this, even if he or she is not a brown girl from Queens? How does Daphne Palasi Andreades use the plot progression, literary devices, and the characters themselves to enhance this coming-of-age story?

Essay Topic 3

In both chapters titled, Jenny, the brown girls reveal their love for other women. What takes place in both of these chapters? How are they similar? How are they different? What aspects of the second chapter titled Jenny reveals that the brown girls have grown up and are more sure of who they are? How does the second chapter also reveal, for some girls, that gender and attraction are a lifelong struggle?

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