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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. All of the fellow boarders at the boarding house where the narrator stays in Chapter 5 work as what?
(a) Cigar makers.
(b) Blacksmiths.
(c) Farmhands.
(d) Basket weavers.

2. What term from the book refers to “the boys who pulled the long stems from the tobacco leaves”?
(a) Gougers.
(b) Rippers.
(c) Stemmers.
(d) Strippers.

3. The narrator’s companion tells him in Chapter 4 that all of the “respectable coloured people” eat where?
(a) At the diner.
(b) At home.
(c) At the church.
(d) At the race track.

4. How does the narrator describe the chairs in the parlor at the rooming house where he arrives in the beginning of Chapter 5?
(a) Made of sturdy oak.
(b) Falling into disrepair.
(c) A vibrant red color.
(d) Cane-bottomed.

5. To whom does the narrator say he became inseparable in school in Chapter 2?
(a) The Girl.
(b) Shiny.
(c) Red Head.
(d) Joel Chandler Harris.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator have for breakfast that is described as “boiled to the consistency where it could be eaten with a fork” in Chapter 4?

2. What is stolen along with the narrator’s money from his trunk in Chapter 4?

3. The narrator of the novel was born in a small town in what state?

4. Who shows the narrator to a boarding house in the beginning of Chapter 5?

5. What does the narrator say he has never been good at because his “ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual”?

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. When and where was the author of the book born and raised? How are his parents described?

3. What event takes place informing the narrator of his ethnic heritage in his early years? How does he react to the information?

4. How are the author’s teenage years described? For whom did he work and where?

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

6. Into what classes does the narrator categorize African Americans in Chapter 5?

7. To whom were African American narratives during the Reconstruction Era generally addressed? Why?

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

9. How is segregation addressed when the narrator eats his first meal in Atlanta in Chapter 4?

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

(see the answer keys)

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