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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 which year of college does Plum have a nervous breakdown caused by heartbreak over a boy?

2. When Verena asks Plum what would happen if she is already living her real life and will never lose weight, what is Plum's reply?

3. Verena tells Plum that if Plum has bariatric surgery, then she will no longer be the spitting image of which one of her family members?

4. How does Plum afford such an expensive apartment in New York City?

5. How old is Verena?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the identifying feature of Leeta's appearance?

2. What quality of The Calliope House does Verena say had made her choose it as the location for her feminist collective?

3. What question does Julia ask when she writes to Plum under the guise of being a teenage fan of Kitty's and what is the result of her question?

4. What significant event happens in the spring of Plum's junior year of high school?

5. What act does Dr. Ormond Brown believe has precipitated the murders of Michael Simmons and Davis Green?

6. How does Janine's outburst at the Baptist Diet meeting foreshadow Plum's own coming changes?

7. What causes Julia to ask Plum if she will hand over the 50,000 plus email addresses of teenage girls who have written to Kitty?

8. What is ironic about Plum's reaction to her encounter with Janine at the Baptist Diet meeting?

9. What is the author's purpose for including the enormous list of lipstick colors within the narrative?

10. What allusion is being made within the line, "On top of a cabinet, a large orchid was trapped under a bell jar" (85) and what is the author's purpose for using it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Determine the author's message regarding violent vigilanteism in pursuit of gender equality. If she does not approve, prove it with evidence from the text and discuss the actions she presents as alternatives. If she does approve, prove it with evidence from the text and discuss the justification she provides for such an extreme position.

Essay Topic 2

William Faulkner once famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of the human heart in conflict with itself. Explain how the theme of Human versus Self is demonstrated within Sarai Walker's novel Dietland. Create a decisive, arguable claim and prove it with quotes from the book.

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by the author in order to create vivid pictures of Plum's transformation in the reader's mind. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used by the author set a particular mood for each of the three scenes.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,528 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample