View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what county in Georgia was Janisse raised?

2. What did Frank use to beat Janisse and her brothers after they stood by while a neighbor boy killed a snapping turtle?

3. When Janisse relates that the children did not believe their birth stories, what does she say would have been a more believable story for their parents to have told about her own birth?

4. What does the term bricoleur mean?

5. Of the 156 million acres that used to constitute the longleaf pine's southeastern range, how many of those acres were once covered by longleaf pines?

Short Essay Questions

1. What reasons does Janisse give for God disliking pine plantations?

2. How does Janisse Ray use her great-grandfather Pun's career progression to show how white-collar jobs can be even more damaging to the environment than can blue-collar jobs?

3. What descriptions of her homeland does Janisse give in order to support her claim that her "homeland is about as ugly as a place gets" (13)?

4. What is the effect on the reader when in the chapter entitled Junkyard, Janisse writes, "I was six the year mental illness stole my father," (77) and how does the author create that effect?

5. The second sentence of the chapter entitled Timber says, "About the same time, the production of naval stores in North Carolina began to wane and big turpentine producers in North Carolina sashayed into Georgia" 99). What is the effect of the author's choice of the verb "sashayed" and what is her purpose in making that choice?

6. Why did Janisse look forward so much to the days when Frank shopped at Winn-Dixie?

7. How does Janisse describe her feelings toward her father when he was mentally unwell?

8. What is the author's purpose in relating the fact that her parents told their children false stories about their births?

9. How does the Thingfinders Club play into the memoir's message regarding ecology?

10. When Janisse wrote that her father Frank was a "mechanic in the word's truest sense," what did she mean?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze the chapter entitled Built By Fire, discussing at least three different literary devices the author uses within the chapter and stating the main message the author is sending to the reader within the chapter.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the role that mental illness plays within the course of Janisse Ray's memoir. What does the reader learn about mental illness, the havoc it can wreak within a family, and how it can also bring a family closer together? How is the mental illness running throughout her family shown to have shaped who Janisse is, even though she herself does not exhibit signs of mental illness?

Essay Topic 3

What is the significance of scene in which Janisse's grandfather Charlie leads Janisse to his secret copse of huckleberries? How does the author use this event as a metaphor for a particular piece of her worldview and what message does she send to the reader through her relaying of this event?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,583 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample