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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 protest did Trethewey's grandmother join in 1963?

2. What game did Trethewey sometimes play with her friend Dede?

3. What name did Trethewey's father assign her in the short stories he wrote?

4. What did some children call Trethewey during a visit to New Orleans that was her first real experience of racism from other children?

5. What truth did the photograph of Trethewey with her family from 1974 make clear, according to her?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What did Trethewey begin to notice when she was out as a child with each of her parents?

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

4. What did Trethewey remember fearing about her drives around Atlanta with Joel?

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

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

7. Why did Gwendolyn's paternal grandmother, Narcissus, dislike Gwendolyn's mother?

8. What nightmare did Trethewey have shortly after moving to Atlanta?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What were Trethewey's mother's and grandmother's experiences with the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi? Write an essay explaining your answers, citing specific references to the text to help support your conclusions.

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)

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