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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through “The American Exception” .

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What flowers does Smith wish she was looking at instead of peonies?
(a) Lupines.
(b) Daffodils.
(c) Tulips.
(d) Roses.

3. At which point does Smith say a man submits to nature?
(a) In private.
(b) At birth.
(c) In old age.
(d) In death.

4. What does Smith say she believed to be the “cage of her circumstance” (3) when she was younger?
(a) Her sexual orientation.
(b) Her race.
(c) Her gender.
(d) Her class.

5. Despite a pandemic’s ability to discriminate, says Smith, the structure of American hierarchy meant that which groups experience higher death rates?
(a) Blacks and whites.
(b) Blacks and Latinos.
(c) Asians and Latinos.
(d) Whites and Asians.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Smith say we had before the pandemic instead of death?

2. What date was the speech Smith references at the start of “The American Exception”?

3. What example does Smith use in “Peonies” as a time when submitting might be better than resisting?

4. What is one of the ways in which Smith said she had tried to resist her own nature?

5. 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)?

(see the answer key)

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