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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 James say he and his siblings are confused by?

2. In what city of Virginia does Hunter's cousin live?

3. What kind of job did Ruth's father have when he first arrived in America?

4. What did Hunter die of?

5. What color does the boy in Sunday School say Jesus should be?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe what happens when Ruth asks James to take the milk back to the shop.

2. What is the state of black people's lives in the 1930s?

3. How does Ruth's life take a turn for the worse when the family moves to Virginia?

4. What happens to James when his mother forgets to pick him up from kindergarten?

5. Describe Jame McBride's family life.

6. How does Peter change Ruth's life?

7. Describe the household James was brought up in.

8. Why does James hit the boy he meets on the bus?

9. How does the 1960s black power affect James in Chapter 3?

10. Why is music important to James?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss with the students first person point of view. Why do the students think first person point of view is not necessarily reliable? What moments in the book do the students think are not so reliable and why? With the students discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using the first person.

Essay Topic 2

Examine the following and write how they developed James as a person:

1) His relationship with Hunter

2) His experiments with drugs and crime

3) His time spent in Louisville

4) Moving to Delaware

Essay Topic 3

Why does Ruth treat her past with such disregard? How has Ruth's view of the past affected James and his siblings? How has Ruth harmed herself by disregarding her past?

(see the answer keys)

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