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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 Octavia take from Dinah?

2. As which of the following does the narrator note Penny’s friends refer to him?

3. To which of the following does the mayor announce some criminals may be deported?

4. In which of the following corners is Penny’s workplace at PHH?

5. As which of the following does Araminta address Nigel?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the narrator find at Araminta’s house when he goes there in search of Nigel?

2. What reasons are given for disbelief in ADZE’s complicity in the mall attack?

3. What does the narrator identify as “The problem with going to a grocery store when you’re the noncooking partner” (215)?

4. What advice does the narrator report receiving from his grandfather?

5. What does the narrator’s grandfather report as the effect when “those problems done piled up on me” (137)?

6. How does the narrator report his father describing “permitting issues” (231)?

7. What reasoning does Supercargo give for resigning from BEG?

8. How does the narrator report imagining Dr. Nzinga?

9. What effects does the narrator note demelanization had on Crooked Crown?

10. What reasons does the narrator give for liking the Mall of the Seven Myrtles?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the following comment:

What was it about people who were late of the Motherland [Africa]? There was something about the cant of their cheeks and noses that made them instantly recognizable in relief to run-of-the-mill African Americans like myself. I guessed that people like this nurse’s ancestors were history’s victors, the lucky souls who had avoided the Middle Passage and miscegenation. Coffee never diluted by creamer (151).

Is the narrator’s assertion of luckiness accurate? What in the novel and in documented history suggests that it is or is not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Is the narrator ultimately a sympathetic character? How or how not?

Essay Topic 3

Explicate the effects of the narrator’s refusal to name himself in the novel.

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