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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 Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, what does Deborah say she lost after her mother's death?

2. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, why does Deborah say she said life is worth living in her quoted writing?

3. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what does Deborah say we do not want our mothers to be?

4. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what does Deborah say we expect our mothers to do?

5. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Blueish Darkness, where does Deborah say her mother was from?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, where does Deborah say she went and why? What does she say this reminded her of?

2. In Chapter Seven: The Black and Bluish Darkness, what does Deborah say she needed to compose? How does she apply this as a metaphor?

3. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what possession from her mother does Deborah say she kept? What touched her most about this?

4. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, how do footsteps factor into the chapter? What do they symbolically represent?

5. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, how does Deborah say she felt after her mother's death? What did she ride instead of an e-bike?

6. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, what does Deborah say happened when she read her book out loud at a festival in Berlin?

7. In Chapter Ten: X is Where I Am, what does Deborah say she told Clara about dating again? How does she say Clara responded?

8. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, how does Deborah say she remembered her journey to Britain as a child? How does she say she thinks of it later?

9. In Chapter Nine: Night Wandering, where does Deborah say her mother grew up? What did her mother teach her in old age?

10. In Chapter Eleven: Footsteps in the House, who does Deborah say were her companions on the train? How does she say they interacted?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In many interactions in the autobiography that Deborah notices, from Big Silver in the beginning and another Big Silver in the middle, to the man taking up the table in the Eurostar, men take up a space that women do not, or have to try to, exist in. How does Deborah's observations of this tie to her discussion of being a minor or major character? How are these experiences of suppression similar or different than what Deborah's mother or other older generations would have experienced? Why do you think these experiences still occur in such away still in a modern sense?

Tie this discussion to outside research into microaggressions and the continued struggle for equality. What do these observations show about how a societal struggle evolves and sticks over time? Consider this also thinking about the idea of composition and recomposition. Is a new story being written? Or is an old story being recomposed with different lines?

Essay Topic 2

Naming and its importance, is a major topic as Deborah becomes irritated that her male colleagues only refer to their spouses as "wife." As she says, "If we don't have names, who are we?" (8).

Apply this idea to how Deborah writes the autobiography. Who is named and who is unnamed in the autobiography? Which of the "characters" are male and female who are named and unnamed? Consider this about the naming and unnaming of wives for Deborah's male friends. What are considerations of naming someone, and how does Deborah use this in her autobiography account? Also consider how naming is a kind of seeing, and not naming is a kind of unseeing.

Essay Topic 3

At the end of Chapter Three, Levy says, "Most children who grow up in that story will struggle, along with everyone else to compose another one" (13).

Consider how Levy composes herself in her life. What does she struggle with in her composition in the autobiography? How is the act of composition not a solitary act, both in the quote and her autobiography but a composition together? Who then helps Levy compose herself, as her patriarchal story falls apart, and what composition does each of these characters add? Consider why she is writing this autobiography and how this story is not only for others, but also for herself.

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