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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 Esperazna like to do?

2. What is the age difference between Minerva and Esperanza?

3. What does Aunt Lupe tell Esperanza to do?

4. Who listens to Esperanza’s stories?

5. What are Alicia and Esperanza talking about in this vignette?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why can’t Esperanza, her mother, and other neighbors and kids agree on what Earl’s “wife” looks like?

2. Why did Marin stay with him in the emergency room?

3. How does the phrase “no speak English” take on two meanings at the end of this vignette?

4. Why does Esperanza feel a special kinship with the trees outside her window?

5. How does Sally defy her parents?

6. Who is Geraldo?

7. Is Sally any happier than she was living at home with her father?

8. Esperanza wants a nice house and wants to live on a hill, but she believes that she’ll be different than the others who do so. How does she believe that she will be different?

9. Esperanza has her fortune told, and Elenita tells her that she sees a “home in the heart”. What could this mean for Esperanza’s future?

10. What is Esperanza hoping to hear when she has her fortune told?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What motifs reoccur in multiple vignettes? What do they represent? How are they used?

Essay Topic 2

Education

a. How does Esperanza view education as a way out of poverty?

b. Are there any characters that have pursued education before Esperanza?

Essay Topic 3

Toward the end of the book, Esperanza says this: "I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate" (Chapter 35, pg. 89). How is this quote indicative of who Esperanza is currently, and who she will become?

(see the answer keys)

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