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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 nickname of the fourteen-year-old boy that the narrator befriends in Chapter 1?
(a) Black hair.
(b) Green eyes.
(c) Red Head.
(d) Blue foot.

2. Who does the narrator say stood at the head of his list of heroes for a long time in Chapter 2?
(a) Charles Darwin.
(b) Jesus.
(c) King David.
(d) Christopher Columbus.

3. What does the narrator say he has never been good at because his “ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual”?
(a) An accompanist.
(b) Interpreting the Bible.
(c) Composing music.
(d) Running a business.

4. Whom does the narrator describe as “a bright young fellow who was himself a student” that he talks with on the train ride in Chapter 4?
(a) A Pullman car porter.
(b) A horse breeder.
(c) A breeder.
(d) A shoe shiner.

5. The narrator states in Chapter 5, “I am sure it would be safe to wager that no group of Southern white men could get together and talk for sixty minutes without bringing up” what?
(a) Their children.
(b) Women.
(c) The race question.
(d) The weather.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the narrator describe the chairs in the parlor at the rooming house where he arrives in the beginning of Chapter 5?

2. All of the fellow boarders at the boarding house where the narrator stays in Chapter 5 work as what?

3. Who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

4. Within how much time is the narrator able to speak Spanish like a native after working at the factory in Chapter 5?

5. How much money does the narrator put in his trunk while his fellow roommates sleep in Chapter 4?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the period in which the book is set described by the author? What was life like for African Americans?

2. Who is the narrator of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man? What secret does he discuss in Chapter 1?

3. How is the first Pullman car porter described by the narrator? Where does the narrator meet him?

4. What is early education like for the narrator? When does he enter public school and how is this setting described?

5. What does the narrator discover when he encounters the porter at a dance in Chapter 5?

6. What popular dance does the narrator describe in Chapter 5? When did the dance develop?

7. How does the theme of identity apply to the novel? How does it apply to the narrator?

8. What elements does the novel share with the Realist Movement in literary style?

9. What are “slave narratives”? How are they related to the narrative of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man?

10. What advice is the narrator given after his money is stolen in Chapter 4? Who helps him out?

(see the answer keys)

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