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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 do the brown girls realize about their elite classmates?

2. What do the letters brought back from the Motherland reveal about the brown girls’ parents?

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

4. As the brown girls see first-hand the devastation caused by the colonizers, what do they realize?

5. What business does the author hint at almost came to the brown girls’ neighborhood?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do the girls who leave Queens force themselves to stay away at college?

2. How are the girls changed by their visits to the Motherland?

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

4. What does Daphne Palasi Andreades call the girls who change their majors to art?

5. What is The Flea?

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

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

8. What famous people are from St. Albans, New York?

9. What seems to have led to Trish’s fatal car accident?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is reinforced regarding the parents of the brown girls through the events in Part Five? What is often the relationship between those in the United States and those back home? What does this say about immigrants to the U.S. today and the role of those new to the U.S.? What can those who are not new Americans learn from them?

Essay Topic 2

Queens has changed since the brown girls were little. How has it changed? What do the girls think about these changes? What do these changes reveal about the locals, as well as those in high positions in local and federal government?

Essay Topic 3

What is the subject matter of Brown Girls? What does Daphne Palasi Andreades have to say about this subject matter? Why might it be important to her? What might she want the reader to understand at the end of this novel? How might she hope this story impacts others?

(see the answer keys)

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