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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. Which of the following does Chris Tate give Ailey?

2. Which of the following does Ailey contract from Abdul?

3. What is the name of Ailey’s first high school?

4. Which of the following is quoted at the beginning of IV?

5. In what year is it arranged that Ailey will transfer high schools?

Short Essay Questions

1. What materials is Ailey expected to bring to college?

2. Throughout the book, a number of women use botanical contraceptives. What are those discussed earliest in the novel?

3. What is the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem?

4. Why does Root dislike homecoming at his college?

5. Summarize the story Helen tells Aggie about menstruation.

6. For what reason does Belle recommend eating greens?

7. Why does Root delay his arrival after Pearl dies?

8. What is the origin of the name of Coromantee?

9. On what is Ailey’s college savings spent, rather than her own collegiate study?

10. Why does Ailey regard the teachers at her second high school as “serious pushovers” (96)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Jeffers’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

Essay Topic 2

Sources attest to the presence of The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois on bestseller lists. Assuming that sales figures reflect popularity, what accounts for the popularity of the novel? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

What effect on the reader does the paired narratives—that of the Songs and that of the main narrative—have? How does the text create that effect?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 550 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample