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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 Miss Garcia tell the class about the paper dolls brought to school by Deja?

2. What project does Deja share with the class when her other project has been destroyed?

3. What element of New York City is brought up during a class discussion, causing Deja to think mistakenly that the class is making fun of Ben?

4. What is the only word Deja says Ma ever uses in relation to Pop?

5. What sort of job does Deja's mother have?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the significance of Deja's initial reaction to the cultural map in the school hallway.

2. For what reason does Deja's sympathy for Ben surprise her?

3. Explain the circumstances of Deja's exclamation, "He's always ruining my life!" (75).

4. What type of language does the author use in order to portray Deja, the novel's protagonist?

5. What is the significance of Deja's name and how do you think it will relate to coming events in the narrative?

6. Describe and analyze the author's use of chapter titles within the novel Towers Falling.

7. What is the effect of Miss Garcia's comment to Deja that if she comes without her homework one more time, Miss Garcia will have to meet with her parents?

8. In what way does Rhodes reveal Deja's family's level of poverty within her first visit to the cafeteria?

9. Describe the author's depiction of Deja's youth through the use of language.

10. What happens when Deja innocently remarks that her school project is "not just about home, it's about the missing towers" (45)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the author's choice to tell the story of Jewell Parker Rhodes's novel Towers Falling using the first person point-of-view. What elements of the novel's themes lend themselves to this choice and what is the author's intended effect on the reader?

Essay Topic 2

How might Towers Falling be classified as a coming-of-age story?

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by the author in order to create vivid pictures of each character's progression through the narrative. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used by the author set a particular mood for each of the three scenes.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,322 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample