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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 city is described as "the City That Never Stops Bleeding" by the narrator in "City Lites, An Interlude"?
(a) Berlin.
(b) Juarez.
(c) Florence.
(d) Paris.

2. The narrator asserts in Chapter 17 that "In the history of American black people, there have been only two with the complete inability to tell a joke" (205). Who, aside from the narrator's father is unable to tell a joke?
(a) Napoleon Bonaparte.
(b) Malcolm X.
(c) Martin Luther King, Jr.
(d) Bill Cosby.

3. What does the narrator say has more "motion of the ocean" than him in Chapter 17 (201)?
(a) "A cotton-picking slave."
(b) "A pier overlooking the sea."
(c) "A plate of day-old sashimi."
(d) "A fat man in a flat boat."

4. When did the Northridge quake occur that collapsed the roof of the school auditorium where the narrator demonstrated castrating a calf?
(a) 1985.
(b) 1994.
(c) 1990.
(d) 1979.

5. What free alcoholic beverage was supplied at the meeting of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals described by the author in Chapter 19?
(a) Bushmills.
(b) Hennessey.
(c) Jameson.
(d) Grey Goose.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the fake school that the narrator has "erected" in Dickens?

2. Who directed the film The Ten Commandments?

3. What magazine was King Cuz flipping through when the narrator sat next to him at the meeting of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals in Chapter 19?

4. Why did the narrator's father flee to Canada?

5. What verb in Chapter 19 means to dispute the truth, validity, or honesty of a statement or thing?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is "Whitey Week" and how is it defined in Chapter 20?

2. What are the three lost cities that the narrator dictates to be sister cities to Dickens?

3. How does the narrator respond to the autographed book he receives in Chapter 19? What is the book?

4. Why does the narrator slip out of the meeting in Chapter 19?

5. What does the narrator demonstrate on Career Day at the Chaff Middle School?

6. Why do the neighborhood children gather in the narrator's yard in Chapter 15?

7. What is burned at the ending of Career Day at Chaff Middle School? Why?

8. What emotional disorder does the narrator tell the court he likely has?

9. What does the apple tree symbolize in Chapter 18?

10. Why have the three cities that Dickens matched with refused to be sister cities?

(see the answer keys)

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