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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 did Gay tell her mother she would decorate her apartment with when she grew up?

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

3. What does Gay's diet during her first summer home from boarding school consist of?

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

5. What activity helped Gay forget her pain during her boarding school years?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How does Gay describe Haitian attitudes toward gluttony?

5. Before she turned to food, what activity did Gay find comfort in as a child?

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

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

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

9. How did the boys who raped Gay treat her afterwards?

10. What are some of the reasons Gay gives explaining why Hunger was a difficult book for her to write?

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

Gay describes conflicting feelings toward cooking. Explain some of her positive and negative attitudes about cooking, citing specific examples from the text.

(see the answer keys)

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