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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 does "exhibits from The American Water Museum" warn that you "cannot drink" (69)?

2. In "Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball," who is mentioned as having stolen the Creator's heart?

3. In "Ode to the Beloved's Hips," why are pears, apples, and figs specifically mentioned?

4. In "Waist and Sway," what page 78 diction choice indicates that the speaker feels punished or oppressed by her desire for the woman?

5. In "Isn't the Air Also a Body, Moving?" what power does the speaker ascribe to the air?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "The First Water Is the Body," what point does the speaker make about the limitations of words?

2. In "The First Water Is the Body," what are the speaker's concerns about explaining to a non-Indian audience that for her people, the river and the body are one thing?

3. What is the setting of "Waist and Sway," and how is its setting unusual for this collection?

4. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," what is depicted in the "Photograph from a South American newspaper," and what is its significance?

5. In "That Which Cannot Be Stilled," what happens when the speaker goes to the hospital for a panic attack?

6. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," what story does the rock painting tell, and what is its significance to the speaker?

7. What two conceits are central to "If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert"?

8. In "The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn," how does the speaker claim to have been wounded, and what does she say causes the "hurt" of the wound?

9. In "Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera," what does the speaker try to tell her brother about cranes, and what is its thematic significance?

10. In "Waist and Sway," what temptation is the speaker trying to resist, and what is the outcome?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the ways in which Diaz's work blends the Western and the indigenous. Use evidence from at least five poems in the collection as support for your ideas; if you use outside sources, be sure to cite them in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Choose a poem we did not specifically discuss in class. Write an explication of this poem, explaining how its techniques create its meaning. At least some of your evidence should be quoted, and if you require outside sources to understand allusions, etc., be sure to cite your sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay in which you contrast the natural and the man-made in Postcolonial Love Poem. How are images and details in these two categories employed? In what contexts? What do they seem to signify? Consider these questions and any others that seem relevant as you defend a thesis that makes a claim about how the natural and man-made differ in this collection.

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