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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 does the wife that great grandfather Bak Sook Goong takes back to China affect Kingston's heritage?
(a) The new wife has no affect on Kingston's heritage.
(b) The new wife's children start the line of Hawaiian-Chinese family members.
(c) The new wife refuses to blend with Bak Sook Goong's other wives, causing the first divorce in her family.
(d) The new wife insists on returning to Hawaii with the rest of the family, removing them from China for good.

2. What signed document states that Chinese and Americans could freely travel, trade, and live in either country?
(a) the queue tax
(b) the Burlingame Treaty
(c) the Nationality Act
(d) the Fourteenth Amendment

3. Which two islands does Kingston suggest her father had gone to before entering America?
(a) Ellis Island and Cuba
(b) Angel Island and Cuba
(c) Hawaii and Cuba
(d) Angel Island and Ellis Island

4. What metaphor does Tang use to compare his bandages hanging to dry?
(a) like a moth's wings
(b) gathered his toes over and under another
(c) streamers that drooped and draped wall to wall
(d) like underwear

5. What were the Chinese wives most likely afraid of when their husbands left for Gold Mountain?
(a) that their husbands will get harmed by bandits while still in China
(b) that their husbands might bring back a new wife
(c) that their husbands would settle in America with new wives
(d) that their husbands would return broke and broken

Short Answer Questions

1. In "The Ghostmate, what imagery does Kingston use when the main character arrives at the house?

2. What is it that Maui instructs all the living creatures on Earth to do in order to accomplish his goal?

3. What finally makes Tu Tzu-chun break his silence?

4. What makes the author afraid to name the village in China where her family lives?

5. Which details from the text imply that Father is a successful business man?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Kingston employ humor in "On Mortality Again"?

2. Why does Bak Goong have so much trouble staying quiet while working in the cane fields?

3. Provide examples from "The Ghostmate" of vivid imagery that reveals the man's mood as he heads back to his childhood home. Is the young man happy or sad?

4. Do you think this chapter "On Fathers" takes place in China or in America? Give reasons for your choice, citing examples from the text.

5. What is the significance of the long path that leads to the widow's house in "The Ghostmate"?

6. At the end of the "The Laws," Kingston predicts that the 1980 census may show that a million or more ethnic Chinese will be living in the United States. Why does she have to predict the census numbers?

7. Compare and contrast the tales that Kingston makes up about how her father gets to America.

8. What is the purpose for making Tang Ao's capture so easy it could be done by women?

9. Explain how the author uses foreshadowing in the first two lines of "On Mortality."

10. Describe grandmother's attitude toward grandfather, Ah Goong, citing examples from the chapter "The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains."

(see the answer keys)

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