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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. How does Sugar define compassion?

2. Which of Eudora Welty's works does Sugar quote?

3. Which of the following does Sugar reference?

4. How old does Sugar note being when her mother died?

5. What word does Sugar note having coined?

Short Essay Questions

1. What advice does Sugar offer for merging households?

2. What reasons does Sugar posit for Crowded’s sons to resist leaving home?

3. Why does Sugar note the youth with whom she worked in advocacy esteemed her?

4. Why does Sugar answer the letters from Playing It Safe, Standing Still, and Claustrophobic together?

5. How does Sugar euthanize the baby bird she finds with a broken neck?

6. What revelation does Sugar’s encounter outside her job in London spur in her?

7. What does Sugar note that the graduates she addresses do NOT have to do?

8. How is the choice of Strayed to write as Sugar explained?

9. What does Wearing Thin cite as examples of things affected by her student loans?

10. What does the book note is “literature’s greatest superpower” (xi)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Conversely, given demonstrated efforts toward censorship in a number of places, what would likely prompt bans of Tiny Beautiful Things? By which groups? Why?

Essay Topic 2

Sugar repeatedly urges her letter-writers towards revealing their emotional selves to those in their lives. Overall, is it good advice? What suggests that it is or is not? How is the suggestion made?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Strayed’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

(see the answer keys)

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