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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 is different about Jesus versus the actor speaking to him in the meme Smith saw during the pandemic?
(a) He is kneeling.
(b) He is praying.
(c) He is on a cross.
(d) He is soaked in blood.

2. 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) Asians and Latinos.
(c) Blacks and Latinos.
(d) Whites and Asians.

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

4. Who does Smith say are patronized by people of all ages?
(a) Kids.
(b) Old men.
(c) Older women.
(d) Young men.

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)?
(a) Holiness.
(b) Sadness.
(c) Opportunity.
(d) Fertility.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the term Smith says reflects her resistance to the nature of her gender?

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

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

4. What does Smith say is the truest, most obvious reason why people write or make art?

5. What is one of the social issues Smith said that pandemic forced many to have to face in her essay “Something to Do”?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Describe the meme Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson.”

4. What are some of the “special words....lurking on the horizon” (4) for women her age that Smith describes in “Peonies”?

5. What does Smith say is the only relief people in lockdown have from one another?

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

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

8. In what ways does Smith say she tried to resist what she felt was the cage of her gender when she was younger?

9. Whose speech does “The American Exception” begin with and what it is in regards to?

10. How does Smith describe the similarity and difference between privilege and suffering in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson”?

(see the answer keys)

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