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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. The girls tell happy stories of their youth with Trish, but one girl thinks back on the time she caught Trish doing what at a party?

2. Why did the brown girls sneak into The Flea as young girls?

3. Why do some girls fear motherhood?

4. Why are many of Trish’s friends initially oblivious to what happened to Trish?

5. In Jenny, how do some of the brown girls feel about Jenny?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is The Flea?

2. In Trish, how do many of the girls feel about their careers now that they are two years out of college?

3. What are the ghosts mentioned in “Ghosts”?

4. What are the problems the girls who leave and the girls who stay see in each other?

5. How do the girls feel about their chosen fields of study in Duty?

6. How has Rockaway Beach changed in “Meanwhile, in Queens”?

7. What happens to the brothers who grow up?

8. What does the narrator say the girls bring home from the Motherland?

9. How do the various family members react to the brothers receiving prison sentences?

10. When the brown girls meet up in Reunion, what are their mutual complaints about college?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Struggle is an important theme in Brown Girls. How do the girls struggle? Do they overcome these obstacles? If so, how? If not, why not? How is this a universal theme? How do you personally relate to this theme and the characters and events in this novel?

Essay Topic 2

Overall, what does 'brown and brown' mean, according to the narrator? What might it mean to the reader? How can people of all colors, races, and genders relate to this? What does this say about the importance of color?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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