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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 kind of musical training had Barbara Kingsolver had?

2. In essay 16: 'Postcards from an Imaginary Mom', how long was Barbara Kingsolver on book tour for?

3. What is the Heard Museum a center for?

4. What does Barbara Kingsolver begin to use more of as she wrote her later books?

5. What does Barbara Kingsolver accuse the American military of doing to Iraq in 1991?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Kingsolver mean by invoking the notion of stone soup?

2. What was Barbara Kingsolver's experience with the Rock Bottom Remainders?

3. What is Kingsolver's idea of a family in 'Stone Soup'?

4. Why did Barbara Kingsolver leave the U.S. for Spain, and what did her time away teach her?

5. What threats to the Hawaiian ecosystems does Barbara Kingsolver describe?

6. What did Kingsolver remember about her hometown in Kentucky when she took her daughter to visit there?

7. Why was Kingsolver reluctant to join the Rock Bottom Remainders?

8. Why was Kingsolver opposed to the Gulf War?

9. Why had Barbara Kingsolver gone to Cotonou to visit?

10. What did Barbara Kingsolver and her daughter do at the Heard Museum?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What effect do Barbara Kingsolver's essays have on you as a reader? What effect do you think Kingsolver was aiming to have with her essays? What about you and what about Kingsolver explains the difference?

Essay Topic 2

What is the basis of Kingsolver's critique of violence and warfare? Is she mounting a philosophical attack on warfare, or is she merely expressing her disagreement with violent methods?

Essay Topic 3

What contradictions are at the center of Barbara Kingsolver's work? What questions does she puzzle over without resolving them? What balances between irreconcilable oppositions does she strike?

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