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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. The comment about “the disgusting social and military project that would come to bloom in Syria and Iraq like toxic desert dogbane” (77) offers an example of which of the following?

2. The comment that “the man seemed to be turning into an imbecile, his hodgepodge views like mental flatulence, one fetid odor after another” (16) offers an example of which of the following?

3. Which of the following phrases does the narrator use to describe Trump’s ascendancy (23)?

4. In what year does Latif die?

5. In what year does the narrator note Malala received a Nobel prize?

Short Essay Questions

1. What, other than seeing Latif, does the narrator note softened his mother’s demeanor?

2. What does the narrator cite as major disagreements his mother has with the idea of American exceptionalism that his father espouses?

3. What does the narrator come to learn is the intent behind questions about whether his play is autobiographical?

4. What reasons does Asma give for disliking The Satanic Verses?

5. What does the narrator note was necessary for him to understand the comments Moroni makes in her class and her letter (xvi-xvii)?

6. What does Fatima expect will be Anjum’s fate, and what actually does happen to Anjum?

7. How does Asma define the Nero complex?

8. What message does the narrator note is sent by the United States turning against Afghanistan and Iraq in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

9. What reasons does the narrator give for surprise at Sikander soliciting prostitution?

10. What does the narrator report valuing in Whitman when he read him initially (xvii)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What function is served by the paratextual shift from a typical prose layout to italics that occurs between “Langford v. Reliant; or, How My Father’s American Story Ends” and “Free Speech: A Coda?” How is it accomplished?

Essay Topic 2

The narrator remarks that “Serious money was the only path to liberation from the indentured servitude of twenty-first-century lower- and middle-class American life” (153). Does the novel support or deny the remark? What in the text suggests it does or does not? How?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the comment that “America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought” (xiii). Is the comment correct? What in the novel and in experience indicates that it is / not? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

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