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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 was the last image Trethewey had of her mother before Gwendolyn's death?

2. Where did Trethewey live with her mother when they would go visit her father in graduate school?

3. What popular television show had Trethewey watched all summer in 1973?

4. Who did Gwendolyn visit a few weeks before she was killed?

5. What did Gwendolyn do to celebrate the completion of her graduate degree?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What is one thing Trethewey remembered her mother doing to their apartment in Atlanta to try to make her feel more at home?

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

6. What image did Trethewey keep in her head from the first day after her mother's death?

7. What pain did Trethewey's grandmother describe long after Gwendolyn had died?

8. Why did Gwendolyn not see her father after about age 16?

9. Why did Trethewey's father want to take her and her mother to Mexico in the 1960s?

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

How did Trethewey connect her recurring dreams about her mother and her own near-drowning experience as a child? Write an essay explaining your answers.

Essay Topic 2

At the end of her memoir, do you think Trethewey has found any kind of peace regarding her relationship with her mother and her mother's killing? Why, or why not? Write an essay explaining your answers, citing specific information from the text to support your answers.

Essay Topic 3

What do the few objects Trethewey kept after her mother's death - the belt made of bullets, the dieffenbachia plant, and a few books - say about her relationship with and feelings about her mother? Write an essay explaining your answers.

(see the answer keys)

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