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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. In Your Own Kind, the brown girls’ parents say they are not what?

2. What is the reason the narrator gives for why the brown girls would never date a brown boy?

3. How does the narrator describe the songs that vocal students memorize?

4. How do the girls feel about the store clerk?

5. When the white boys try to be gently intimate, how do the girls NOT react?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the community in which the brown girls live?

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

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

4. What takes place in Great Expectations?

5. Who are the guests who stay with the brown girls and their families? Why are they there?

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

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

8. Why are some of the girls bra experts?

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

10. In Brown Boys, how does the narrator describe the different sides of Prospect Park?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Like the brown girls in Brown Girls, Daphne Palasi Andreades is from Queens, New York and a brown girl herself. How does this aid the reader in believing the narrator and author are one and the same? What other details from the book suggest that the author is the narrator and the book is autobiographical? Why might the details of this story be important for the author to share about her own life?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

The plot is quite linear, as Daphne Palasi Andreades tells the story following a timeline of the brown girls as they age. How do you as the reader feel about this approach to storytelling? Why do you feel this way? If you were the author, would you have written it differently? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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