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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Trethewey yell when she woke up from her dream in Part I?

2. Where did Trethewey often go on Saturday outings with her mother in Part II?

3. What did Joel tell Trethewey was the reason his feet were deformed?

4. Which family that Trethewey and her family befriended reminded her of the Jackson Five?

5. What is a strange feature of the last formal portrait of Gwendolyn?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross in the driveway of Trethewey's grandmother's house in the 1960s?

2. What occasion did Trethewey's birth also mark in 1966?

3. Why did Trethewey's parents travel to Ohio to elope in 1965?

4. What does the photograph from May 1974 make plain to Trethewey when she looks at it now?

5. What was unusual about the plant Trethewey saved after her mother's death?

6. What did Trethewey remember most clearly about leaving Mississippi for Atlanta in 1972?

7. What did Trethewey want more than anything after moving to Atlanta?

8. What monument was very close to the apartment where Trethewey's mother was killed?

9. Why did it take longer than it might have for Trethewey to realize her father and mother had separated?

10. What question did Trethewey's mother ask her in her dream in Part I?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What did Trethewey think about her mother's decision to visit a psychic weeks before her death? Why did Trethewey herself decide to visit a medium as an adult? Write an essay explaining your answers.

Essay Topic 2

What did Trethewey learn from the pages of her mother's notes that were in Gwendolyn's briefcase at the time of Gwendolyn's death in 1985? Write an essay explaining your answers.

Essay Topic 3

Why did Trethewey decide not to tell her parents the first time children insulted her because she is mixed race? What connection did Trethewey make between this incident and her path to becoming a writer? Write an essay explaining your answers.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 680 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample