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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 disturbances does Barbara Kingsolver experience in Tucson?

2. What did Laurence Steinberg study?

3. Why were women relegated to household chores, according to Barbara Kingsolver?

4. How do Barbara Kingsolver's meditations on private property relate to her thoughts about moving to Tucson?

5. What was Barbara Kingsolver fleeing from in the U.S.?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was Camille's experience of Spain like?

2. How did Barbara Kingsolver's sense of fashion change as she grew up?

3. How would the Native Indians in Tucson bring rain after the dry season, according to Barbara Kingsolver?

4. What did Barbara Kingsolver find when she started to read?

5. What was Barbara Kingsolver's solution to the question of private property in her new home in Tucson?

6. Where does the idea of private property come from?

7. What is Barbara Kingsolver's philosophy for raising her own daughter?

8. What does the title of this essay signify?

9. What problem does Barbara Kingsolver say her school system was plagued by, in 'How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life'?

10. Where does intellectual testing come from, in Barbara Kingsolver's opinion?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What value does nature have, in Kingsolver's essays, and how does Kingsolver reconcile the activity of being in nature with the activity of reading and writing books? Are they related? Are they unrelated? Are they complementary, antagonistic?

Essay Topic 2

Define each of Barbara Kingsolver's modes, and describe what you think is her primary or strongest mode as an essayist. What type of essay is she best at? What is her weakest suit?

Essay Topic 3

What contradictions are at the center of Barbara Kingsolver's work? What questions does she puzzle over without resolving them? What balances between irreconcilable oppositions does she strike?

(see the answer keys)

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