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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 summer camp did Gay attend the summer following her sophomore year of high school?

2. Who went with Gay to learn more about gastric bypass surgery?

3. Where was Gay born?

4. How old was Gay when she started boarding school?

5. What would Gay's mother add to the water when she was washing meat or vegetables?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gay feel about the use of BMI (body mass index) measurements?

2. What was Gay's mother’s approach to teaching her children how to cook?

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

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

5. How does Gay describe Haitian attitudes toward gluttony?

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

7. What was the most important thing that Mr. McGuinn did for Gay?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

While Gay details her parents’ love and support, she also feels tension with them because of her obesity. Write an essay analyzing the complications and tensions involved in Gay’s relationship with her parents.

Essay Topic 2

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 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 621 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample