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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 prize did William Saroyan turn down for his play, "The Time of Your Life," in 1943?

2. In grandmother's dream about her friend Nevart (described in "The Woman in Blue"), what was Nevart drinking?

3. What colors were the threads on the brocade of Mr. Blumenthal's yarmulke?

4. In what year did Roman Emperor Constantine turn Byzantium into the imperial residence?

5. What kind of ice cream did grandmother buy Peter when they accidentally got off the subway in Harlem?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Balakian react to seeing his father perform emergency medical care to the heart attack victim at the football game?

2. How did sports help heal the rift between Balakian and his father?

3. How did Balakian's memorial poem for his grandmother reflect his Armenian past?

4. Why was Balakian so unnerved by his grandmother's constant doting on him at family gatherings?

5. Did Balakian's father have a strong connection to Constantinople, and how did that reflect the city's tumultuous history?

6. Why did Balakian's father send him the newspaper clipping about the Armenian Soviet republic and how did Peter react?

7. Describe Balakian' s father.

8. Why did Balakian's father insist his son leave the public schools and attend a private school?

9. Why did Balakian and Auntie Anna argue about literature?

10. Why were books so important to Balakian's Aunt Nona?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Balakian's aunts were deeply critical of American suburban life, believing that it lacked culture and refinement. Write a compare and contrast essay looking at both the attitudes of the family members toward the suburbs versus the city and the realities they encountered in their separate worlds. Include ways in which the cities and suburbs were similar as well as ways in which they were markedly different. Compare the cultural offerings as well as the sense of community in the two areas.

Essay Topic 2

Balakian wrote about his father's love of sports and how that formed a bridge between the two. Write an essay exploring how sports can form a bond between fathers and sons. How can fathers and sons express their love for one another through a shared interest in sports? Was Peter's father able to express his love for his son in any other way? Did Peter understand that his father was expressing his love for him through sports while he was still a child? Or did he not realize that until he reached adulthood? If he did not understand it until adulthood, did that affect his relationship with his father in childhood?

Essay Topic 3

Balakian wrote frequently about the central role food played in his extended family. What importance does food have in Armenian culture? How did the experience of starvation during the genocide impact Armenian immigrants to the U.S.? Would food still have had the same importance if the Armenians had not experienced starvation? How do immigrant families transmit their culture to their children through food? How do they express their love at the dinner table?

(see the answer keys)

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