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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 belief does Mitchell Jackson hold that he underscores by calling it his "beating heart" (179)?
(a) Boys need fathers.
(b) Boys need mothers.
(c) Girls need mothers.
(d) Girls need fathers.

2. For how many years had The High Bridge been inactive before reopening again just before Emily Raboteau and her family took a walk across it?
(a) Twenty-plus.
(b) Forty-plus.
(c) Fifty-plus.
(d) Thirty-plus.

3. When Kiese Laymon invites his grandmother up to Oxford where he lives at the time, why does she refuse to come?
(a) Because there is a music festival happening in her hometown.
(b) Because her health is too poor for such a long trip.
(c) Because Kiese is the only black person she knows in Oxford.
(d) Because she does not like to infringe upon Kiese's privacy.

4. When the author of the essay "Black and Blue" was warned by university officials to avoid walking in certain areas of the city, what threat does he mistakenly think he is being warned about?
(a) Police.
(b) Weather.
(c) Wild animals.
(d) Criminals.

5. When all flags in the United States flew at half staff after the killings at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, which state did not lower its Confederate flag on state-house grounds?
(a) Georgia.
(b) Alabama.
(c) South Carolina.
(d) Kentucky.

Short Answer Questions

1. When Kevin Young states that being black is not a feeling and is not "simply a state of mind" (109), what does he say blackness is instead?

2. In his essay "Blacker Than Thou," Kevin Young says that "racism's daily injustices are almost" a what "against it" (112)?

3. Which black female artist's work does Kiese Laymon set up as a counterpoint to the work of OutKast?

4. What author does the poem "Queries of Unrest" reference in its dedication?

5. The author of the essay "Black and Blue" imagined himself in childhood as the Jamaican version of what fictional character?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who does Claudia Rankine name as the person who created "a new pathway for how to think about a lynched body" (147) and what does she mean?

2. How does Emily Raboteau say she wishes to distinguish her role as a mother from both types of mothers depicted in the widely-circulated comic entitled "Still Two Americas"?

3. What was the object mentioned in the very first lines of OutKast's music first heard by Kiese Laymon and why did the object's mention draw him in?

4. What event does the author of "Composite Pops" name as the one that taught him that he must be able to save himself?

5. What contrast does the author of "Black and Blue" set up by using a quote from Fats Waller and a quote by Walt Whitman prior to the body of his essay?

6. How does the poem "Queries of Unrest" connect to the part of the collection that it opens, entitled Reckoning?

7. What two categories does Kevin Young say white thinking or acting out about being black almost always fall into and what example does he give for each category he names?

8. What two reasons does the author of "Know Your Rights" give for being bothered by her four-year-old son's tantrum during the family's walk to High Bridge?

9. At the start of the essay "The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning," why do the two women talking about one's recent arrival of a son laugh when the new mother says her first thought had been how she could get her baby boy out of America?

10. How does Kevin Young, the author of the essay "Blacker Than Thou" support his point that similarities and solidarity among black people are more about culture than about physical appearances?

(see the answer keys)

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