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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 is the name of the police unit featured in Black and White?

2. What does Bonnie Tsui say represents "the ambiguous Asian everywhere" (iv)?

3. What is a cheongsam?

4. How did the "Emperor" get his name?

5. In "ACT II: INT. GOLDEN PALACE," what happens when the building residents get fed up with their living conditions?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do the residents of the Chinatown SRO Apartments feel as if they never really leave work?

2. What are the emotional complexities of the memories attached to the protagonist's mother's scars?

3. Why did the protagonist's father and Older Brother have a falling out, and what does the detectives' reaction demonstrate about them?

4. What ultimately happened to Older Brother?

5. What language does the protagonist speak to his father in the restaurant, and how does it reveal one source of the gap between them?

6. Explain the central conceit of the section in which the protagonist visits and cares for his father despite his father seeming not to recognize him.

7. What are some of the details that people should realize mean that Sifu is living in poverty?

8. When Green and Turner do not offer Mini Boss the deal that he wants, how does he escape?

9. What offensive remark does Turner make when the protagonist threatens to go back to the restaurant, and what happens afterward?

10. What causes the protagonist to realize that his father is suffering from dementia, and how does he respond?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay that examines how Interior Chinatown's status as metafiction as well as its use of pastiche, and hyperreality and simulacra relate to the thematic motif of performance versus authenticity. Be sure to support your ideas with evidence from the text and to cite any outside references in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay in which you consider Chinatown--both the Chinatown of the novel and real-world Chinatowns--as simulacra. Use evidence from the novel and from outside sources to evaluate how these various "Chinatowns" function as simulated replacements for reality. Be sure to cite your sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Write a thesis-driven essay in which you examine the various sources of and beliefs about power and authority in Interior Chinatown. Be sure that your essay recognizes the difference between power and authority and incorporates this distinction into its central argument. Support your claims with evidence from the text.

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