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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the speaker tired of in "One-Way Ticket"?
(a) People who are afraid of him.
(b) Lynching.
(c) All of these answers are correct.
(d) Jim Crow laws.

2. Which color hands are NOT mentioned in "Daybreak in Alabama"?
(a) Blue.
(b) Brown.
(c) Yellow.
(d) White.

3. What job does Ruby Brown have when the poem of her same name starts?
(a) Working at a hospital.
(b) Working in a library.
(c) Working in a white woman's kitchen.
(d) Working in the fields.

4. What does the speaker in "Mother to Son" claim her life has NOT been?
(a) "No crystal stair."
(b) "No happy tune."
(c) "No easy train to ride."
(d) "No happy path."

5. What does the speaker claim the wine-maiden's lips are as sweet as in "Midnight Dancer"?
(a) Honey.
(b) Molasses.
(c) Sugar.
(d) Purple dew.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does the speaker in "Necessity" finally decide he has to work after all?

2. What does the Gypsy need in her hand in "Ballad of the Gypsy" before she reads the speaker's fortune?

3. In "Little Old Letter," the speaker claims never to have been so lonely since when?

4. How does the character in "Migrant" sign his paycheck?

5. What does the speaker in "Cross" take back in regard to his father?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do the poems in "Life Is Fine" treat life's trials and tribulations?

2. How are men portrayed in the poems in "Lament Over Love"?

3. What do both "Still Here" and "Me and the Mule" celebrate?

4. What is the common tone of the pieces in "Life Is Fine"?

5. Why does the speaker in "Third Degree" confess to police?

6. Which famous line of Langston Hughes is in "Harlem"?

7. What is the history of the word "mulatto," as evidenced in the poem of the same name?

8. What does the speaker in "High to Low" accuse the "low" African-Americans of doing?

9. What major themes are present in the poems included in "Montage of a Dream Deferred"?

10. What is the commonality between all of the poems in "Lament Over Love"?

(see the answer keys)

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