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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 does Bride remember as the most important part of her testimony against Sylvia Huxley?

2. What is the last thing Bride remembers saying before Sylvia Huxley beats her?

3. What was Julie serving time for?

4. What advice does Bride remember Jeri giving her about make up?

5. When Bride confesses the whole story about Sylvia Huxley, what does Brooklyn suggest?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Sweetness say she told Lula Ann to call her Sweetness instead of Mama?

2. What kind of friend is Brooklyn?

3. What is the relationship between Bride’s memory of her landlord and her memory of Sylvia Huxley?

4. What effect does Bride’s testimony have on her relationship with her mother?

5. In a number of places, Bride says that she feels ‘erased.’ What is the importance of this feeling, in God Help the Child?

6. What does Lula Ann’s dark skin mean to her mother?

7. Where does Sylvia Huxley say she found a refuge from prison life?

8. What does Bride find when she stars going through Booker’s possessions at her house?

9. What caused Julie to try to kill herself?

10. How does Sylvia Huxley describe her and Julie’s status among the prisoners at Decagon?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Evaluate God Help the Child as a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age narrative. How does Bride make the trip back to childhood and then forward again, in a new way? Compare and contrast her different periods of puberty.

Essay Topic 2

Write a character sketch of the author based on her style and content. What values does she hold dear? What are her hopes and fears? What kind of person do you think she is? Anchor your sketch in passages in the book.

Essay Topic 3

In what ways is God Help the Child relevant to contemporary readers? What contemporary issues are in play in the book, and how would the book contribute to contemporary discussion? Cite specific discussions from contemporary sources, and cite specific instances from the book that describe its contemporary relevance.

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