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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Smith say has “rarely been random” in America in her essay “The American Exception”?
(a) Presidential nominations.
(b) COVID-19 cases.
(c) COVID-19 recoveries.
(d) Untimely death.

2. What is the title of the third story in Zadie Smith’s collection, Intimations?
(a) Something to Do.
(b) Something to Say.
(c) Something to write.
(d) How to fill time during a pandemic.

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

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

5. What type of person does Smith say has created some of the most powerful art she has seen?
(a) People who have no contact with the outside world.
(b) People who endlessly engage with their subjects.
(c) People who feel completely alone in the world.
(d) People who constantly strive for perfection.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which writer does Smith quote in her essay “Something to Do”?

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?

3. What does Smith liken Trump’s speech to after coming to her senses after the first part of his speech?

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

5. 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?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the moment Smith realized her own privilege in a Subway shop.

2. What is one of the societal issues Smith says the pandemic lockdown has forced many people to face?

3. How do “defenders of art typically justify its existence” (21) according to Smith?

4. Despite a plague's inability to discriminate, Smith says what about the structure of America’s hierarchy?

5. What does Smith say about love in “Something to Do”?

6. What is Smith doing at the very start of “Peonies’?

7. What does Smith say she does not need “a Freudian” to tell her regarding herself and the two other women her age staring at the tulips in Jefferson Market Garden?

8. What does Smith say that artists learned in regards to privacy and time at the start of “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

9. What does Smith say about what disaster demands at the start of “The American Exception”?

10. What does Smith says is the true reason writers write when most else is “stripped away” (20)?

(see the answer keys)

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