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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through “Something To Do” .

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Smith say we had before the pandemic instead of death?
(a) Immortality.
(b) The flu.
(c) Casualties and victims.
(d) Universal healthcare.

2. Though private interests play a role in the lives of many Americans, what private interest does Smith say should not be one of them?
(a) Education.
(b) The Postal system.
(c) Healthcare.
(d) Social security.

3. At the end of “The American Exception,” what did Smith say states were forced to bid on during the pandemic?
(a) Houses.
(b) Laptops.
(c) Personal Protective Equipment.
(d) Textbooks.

4. What does Smith say “demanded a new dawn” (11)?
(a) Americans.
(b) Women.
(c) Night.
(d) Disaster.

5. “Truly laboring people,” Smith says, have to adhere to this, to which an artist does not have to adhere?
(a) A boss’s whim.
(b) A time clock.
(c) Traffic patterns.
(d) A bus schedule.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the title of the second essay in Zadie’s Smith’s collection, Intimations?

2. What “obsession” (6) does Smith liken to her resistance to nature as a youth, an obsessions she says many writers share?

3. As Smith stares into the garden of peonies near two other women her age, Smiths comments of what “gaudy symbol,” the flowers represent, “in the middle of a barren concrete metropolis” (3)?

4. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that Americans attacked death as a series of what?

5. What name does Smith say would better suit the writing department in which she works at the University in “Peonies”?

(see the answer key)

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