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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What does Smith say the link to long life in America is?
(a) Money.
(b) Healthy eating habits.
(c) Good luck.
(d) Exercise.

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

5. What date was the speech Smith references at the start of “The American Exception”?
(a) 2021.
(b) 2020.
(c) 2019.
(d) 2018.

6. What song does Smith reflect on how the lyrics would change if it were written for a man?
(a) (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman.
(b) Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
(c) I Am Woman.
(d) Just Like A Woman.

7. In “Something to Do,” Smith says that without love life can seem what?
(a) Tragic.
(b) Empty and endless.
(c) Comical.
(d) Dark and depressing.

8. What former British Prime Minister does Smith reference at the end of “The American Exception”?
(a) Margaret Thatcher.
(b) Neville Chamberlain.
(c) Tony Blair.
(d) Winston Churchill.

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

10. Nabokov said the inspiration for his novel came from an article about an ape that drew what?
(a) His self-portrait.
(b) His captors.
(c) His own cage.
(d) Bananas.

11. What is one of the ways in which Smith said she had tried to resist her own nature?
(a) By wearing fake nails.
(b) By not keeping track of her menstrual cycles.
(c) By speaking with a fake accent.
(d) By dying her gray hair.

12. In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” Smith says that class can alter what?
(a) Your taste in clothes.
(b) Your level of empathy.
(c) Your conception of reality.
(d) The number of cars you own.

13. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that the poorer countries Trump condemned did not have the foresight to be what?
(a) Europe.
(b) America.
(c) Sweden.
(d) Iceland.

14. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that Americans attacked death as a series of what?
(a) Discrete problems.
(b) Bad decisions.
(c) Unfortunate events.
(d) Mysteries.

15. What is the title of the second essay in Zadie’s Smith’s collection, Intimations?
(a) Intimations.
(b) Screengrabs.
(c) Peonies.
(d) The American Exception.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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)?

2. In suffering like Mel Gibson, Smith says that prior to the pandemic people were learning about the link between privilege and what?

3. At the start of “Suffering Like Mel Gibson,” which type of person does Smith say dreamed of an “isolation within isolation” (29) at the start of the pandemic?

4. What term does Smith reference in “The American Exception” which Trump used in reference to other countries he saw as inferior?

5. The moment Smith realized that she had misunderstood the conversation between the women in the Subway shop was the moment Smith says she became aware of her what?

(see the answer keys)

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