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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. For what county does Jeremiah work as a slave patroller?

2. What is the name of Zulu’s restaurant?

3. Whom of the following is assigned to chaperone Gloria?

4. In what year does Samuel win a land lottery in Georgia?

5. Ailey reads an article by whom?

Short Essay Questions

1. To what labor is Gideon put after being transported to what would become Georgia?

2. How does Ailey react to the work she does in the archives for Oludara?

3. Why does Samuel hire Holcomb as overseer?

4. How does Whitcomb explain his pressing Ailey harder than other students?

5. How does Lady explain the departure of her parents to her children?

6. How is Ailey enrolled as Oludara’s research assistant?

7. How does Rebecca regard Ailey’s presence in their common graduate program?

8. What bias does Ailey note is at work among the interviewers for the Federal Writers’ Project?

9. How does Ailey address Rebecca’s questions about the Pinchard descent of her own family?

10. How does Lydia dissuade Dante’s uncle from inserting himself into their nuptials?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Readerly attention focuses on the following comment: “For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained” (4). To what extent does the text bear out the comment, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Typically, an epigraph is expected to speak to or set the tone for the work it introduces. Does the epigraph of The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois do so for the present novel? How or how not?

Essay Topic 3

To what extent can the novel be taken as autobiographical? What in the novel and its context of composition suggests as much, and how does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 576 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample