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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. Which of the following was one way that Gay hid her new habit from other people?

2. What kind of game did Gay play at the Casino while a PhD student?

3. What was the name of the boy responsible for Gay's trauma?

4. What was the name of the boarding school Gay attended?

5. What did Gay's father do for a living?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did the author gain weight so rapidly once she went to boarding school?

2. What prompts Gay to drop out of Yale and move across the country?

3. What activity did Gay enjoy in high school that helped her forget her pain?

4. How does Gay describe her relationship with her family as a young child?

5. What does Gay mean when she says her body is a cage?

6. What was Gay's relationship to food like before her rape?

7. What is Gay referring to when she says her life was split in two, “the before and the after" (14)?

8. How did Gay’s parents react to her weight gain when she came home for Thanksgiving her first year in boarding school?

9. What relationship did Gay have with the boy who raped her?

10. Why did Gay like the idea of going to boarding school when she was 13?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Gay writes about the interplay between obesity and gender, declaring “My fat body empowers people to erase my gender” (256). Write an essay analyzing what she means by this, using specific example from her experiences.

Essay Topic 2

Gay describes her body as a cage “of my own making” and says she has been trying to figure a way out of it for 20 years (19). Write an essay detailing what she means by this and provide examples of how she feels imprisoned or limited by her body.

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the book, Gay describes how she becomes upset or panicked when she starts a new weight-loss regime and starts losing a significant amount of weight. Write an essay explaining why she reacts this way, detailing the conflicting feelings she describes about her obesity.

(see the answer keys)

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