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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 8 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the first image of the sex workers, what is being emphasized?
(a) Their determination.
(b) Their reaction to the cold.
(c) The motion of their bodies.
(d) The burden of social expectations.

2. What is being referred to with the expression "silver break" (line 7)?
(a) Reflections.
(b) Dawn.
(c) Streetlights.
(d) Headlights.

3. What does the word "shod" in line 12 refer to?
(a) Footwear.
(b) Clothing.
(c) Movement.
(d) Sound.

4. Which line most clearly echoes the tension between "little girls" (line 5) and "prowling" (line 6)?
(a) Line 11, "The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet."
(b) Line 9, "Through the lone night until the last snow-flake."
(c) Line 12, "Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street."
(d) Line 7, "Through the long night until the silver break."

5. Which lines of each stanza are indented?
(a) The second and fourth.
(b) The first and sixth.
(c) The fifth and sixth.
(d) The first and third.

Short Answer Questions

1. What color does the speaker assign to the sex workers' feet?

2. Which techniques are evident in line 4, "To bend and barter at desire's call"?

3. What ideas are associated with the snow in this poem?

4. What are the sex workers wearing on their feet?

5. In line 1, "footsteps of a lass" is an example of which technique?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the second stanza set up a contrast between dark and light?

2. How does McKay convey the idea that these women are sex workers?

3. How does the use of the word "prowling" contrast with the poem's previous descriptions of the women?

4. Describe the form of this poem.

5. What does the poem conclude is the cause of the women's choice to pursue sex work?

6. What indications does the speaker give that he feels the sex workers' choices indicate something about all Black people in America?

7. What is the poem's first image, and how does it set a tone for the rest of the poem?

8. Where is Harlem and why is it significant to the meaning of this poem?

(see the answer keys)

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