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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 is Gifty studying at Stanford University School of Medicine?

2. As practice for becoming a preacher’s wife as a child, who did Gifty pray for?

3. What store did Gifty’s father get frequently accused of stealing from while in American?

4. Studying Gerard Manley Hopkins inspired Gifty to begin writing what?

5. At what university is Gifty’s lab in Chapter 2?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Gifty’s Aunt point out to her in the market in Ghana in Chapter 1 and what did she say?

2. Gifty and Anne become good friends. Describe how Anne describes Gifty at the end Chapter 26.

3. What did Gifty ask her mother while she was putting on makeup to get ready for work, and how did her mother respond?

4. In Chapter 2, who calls Gifty from Alabama and what does he tell her about her mother?

5. What did the study on schizophrenia, discussed in Chapter 24, discover?

6. Why did Gifty not want to take creative writing in college even though many said it was an easy A?

7. Describe the “intervention” (131) the church had on the young woman of the congregation.

8. What do Gifty and Katherine have in common?

9. What does Gifty’s mom think of mental illness?

10. In Chapter 6, what did Gifty witness between her brother and mother when she was a young girl?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze the paragraph on page 46 about her memories of Chin Chin. What does this tell readers about her portrayal of him in the novel? Is it reliable?

Essay Topic 2

Analyze Gifty’s relationship to her mother and how it changed over time.

Essay Topic 3

Mental illness, addiction, and depression are themes in the novel. Analyze how the author uses her characters to develop these themes.

(see the answer keys)

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