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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. In "How the Milky Way Was Made," what do the Natives lift into the sky?

2. In "The Cure for Melancholy Is to Take the Horn," what creature's horn is referenced in the poem's epigraph?

3. In "It Was the Animals," what technique is used in the description of the piece of the "ark" next to the speaker's coffee cup?

4. In "My Brother, My Wound," to what does the speaker compare the light in the holes in the walls?

5. In "Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball," what kind of food is mentioned twice?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. In what two senses can the title "My Brother, My Wound" be interpreted?

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

4. In "exhibits from The American Water Museum," what does the guidebook say?

5. In "Grief Work," what is the symbolic significance of the poem's final sequence in which the speaker and her beloved are in the river?

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

7. In "Ode to the Beloved's Hips," what metaphorical comparison is developed in the lines, "How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed/ Trinity?" (37)?

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

9. In "Ode to the Beloved's Hips," what is the rhetorical function of the lines: "I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock/ right now" (37)?

10. In "Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera," what does the speaker's brother request, and why?

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 contradictions in Postcolonial Love Poem. What paradoxical or contradictory situations does Diaz's work comment on? Does Diaz seem comfortable or uncomfortable with these contradictions? What literary devices does she use to communicate them? Use textual evidence from at least five poems in defense of your ideas.

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Write an essay in which you explore how the fusion of land, body, and spirit in Postcolonial Love Poem centers the Mojave worldview. Use evidence from throughout the collection in support of your thesis, and if you utilize outside sources, be sure to cite them in MLA format.

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