Analyzing an Autobiographical Essay Answers

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1
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Which statements accurately compare the two passages? Select three options.

A
Each text describes the tributes and taxes that Trujillo demanded.
B
Each text describes how frightening it was to live under the dictatorship.
C
Each text presents different information on the same topic.
D
Each text presents different information from a different point of view.
E
Each text describes how men and women were treated differently.
2
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Which details does the author include to support the central idea about the result of the dictatorship? Select two options.

A
“lost their lives”
B
“family friends”
C
“lucky”
D
“escapes”
E
“slaughter”
3

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.When my sisters and I cared too much about our appearance, my mother would tell us how Trujillo's vanity knew no bounds. How in order to appear taller, his shoes were specially made abroad with built-in heels that added inches to his height. How plumes for his Napoleonic hats were purchased in Paris and shipped in vacuum-packed boxes to the Island. How his uniforms were trimmed with tassels and gold epaulettes and red sashes, pinned with his medals, crisscrossing his chest. How he costumed himself in dress uniforms and ceremonial hats and white gloves—all of this in a tropical country where men wore guayaberas in lieu of suit jackets, short-sleeved shirts worn untucked so the body could be ventilated. My mother could go on and on.

A
“My sisters and I cared too much about our appearance.”
B
“Trujillo’s vanity knew no bounds.”
C
“All of this in a tropical country where men wore guayaberas.”
D
“My mother could go on and on.”
4

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.My mother, especially, lived in terror of the consequences of living as free citizens. In New York City, before Trujillo was killed, Dominican exiles gathered around the young revolutionary Juan Bosch planning an invasion of the Island. Every time my father attended these meetings, my mother would get hysterical. If the SIM found out about my father's activities, family members remaining behind were likely to be in danger. Even our own family in New York could suffer consequences. Five years earlier, in 1955, Galindez, an exile anti-Trujillo teaching at Columbia University, had disappeared from a New York subway. The same thing could happen to us.I don't know if my father complied or just got too busy trying to make a living in this country. But after a few months of hotheaded attendance, he dropped out of these political activities and his silence deepened.

A
Alvarez explains that her parents often disagreed about how to react to the dictatorship now that they were living in a free country.
B
Alvarez explains how her father became heavily involved in anti-Trujillo activities, but soon became too busy to participate in them.
C
Alvarez explains how her mother eventually convinced her father to stop attending political meetings because of the danger.
D
Alvarez explains that, although her parents reacted differently to the stress they endured, both became silent about the dictatorship.
5

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.Passage A:And so, long after we had left, my parents were still living in the dictatorship inside their own heads. Even on American soil, they were afraid of awful consequences if they spoke out or disagreed with authorities. The First Amendment right to free speech meant nothing to them. Silence about anything "political” was the rule in our house.Passage B:My mother, especially, lived in terror of the consequences of living as free citizens. In New York City, before Trujillo was killed, Dominican exiles gathered around the young revolutionary Juan Bosch planning an invasion of the Island. Every time my father attended these meetings, my mother would get hysterical. If the SIM found out about my father's activities, family members remaining behind were likely to be in danger. Even our own family in New York could suffer consequences.

A
Alvarez describes how the SIM’s threats and activities followed her family even in the United States.
B
Alvarez shows how her parents' fears about the dictatorship turned out to be false as the situation in the Dominican Republic improved.
C
Alvarez shows how her parents' fears about the dictatorship affected their thoughts and actions even when they lived in the United States.
D
Alvarez describes how her parents feared the values of free speech and freedom of association.
6

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.Perhaps because she had innocently revered him, my mother was now doubly revolted by this cold-blooded monster. He became something of an obsession with her—living as she was by then in exile with my father, isolated from her family who were still living on the Island. As my sisters and I were growing up, Trujillo and his excesses figured in many of my mother’s cautionary tales.

A
During her exile, the author’s mother did not know how she felt about Trujillo.
B
The author and her sisters were fascinated by Trujillo.
C
The author’s mother thought of Trujillo constantly.
D
Trujillo became more controlling to the author’s mother after her family fled the country.
7

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.By the time my mother married my father, however, she knew all about the true nature of the dictatorship. Thousands had lost their lives in failed attempts to return the country to democracy. Family friends, whom she had assumed had dropped away of their own accord, turned out to have been disappeared. My father had been lucky. As a young man, he had narrowly escaped to Canada after the plot he had participated in as a student failed. This was to be the first of two escapes. That same year, 1937, El Generalísimo ordered the overnight slaughter of some eighteen thousand Haitians, who had come across the border to work on sugarcane plantations for slave wages.

A
The dictatorship resulted in many deaths.
B
It was possible for people to escape to Canada.
C
Many people fought for a democratic nation.
D
The author’s family was unusually lucky.
8

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.Passage A:In December 1960, four months after our arrival, Time magazine reported the murder of the three Mirabal sisters, who along with their husbands had started the national underground Dominican Republic. My parents confiscated the magazine. To our many questions about what was going on, my mother always had the ready answer, "En boca cerrada no entran moscas.” No flies fly into a closed mouth. Later, I found out that this very saying had been scratched on the lintel of the entrance of the SIM's torture center at La Cuarenta.Passage B:The novel would be a fictional retelling of the story of three Mirabal sisters, contemporaries of my mother, whose murder had been reported in that confiscated Time magazine. This time, my mother warned, I was not just going to anger family members, but I would be directly responsible for their lives. There were still old cronies of the dictator around who would love an excuse to go after my family, after my father, after her.This was one of the hardest challenges I had ever had to face as a writer. If my mother were indeed speaking the truth, could I really put my work above the lives of human beings? But if I shut up, wouldn't I still be fanning the members of the dictatorship with its continuing power of censorship and control over the imagination of many Dominicans?

A
Alvarez grappled with the issue of writing a novel about a dangerous subject.
B
Alvarez learned about a terrible murder and decided to write a fictional retelling of it.
C
Alvarez decided to publish her novel without regard for her mother’s feelings.
D
Alvarez faced one of the biggest challenges of being a writer: choosing a topic.
9

Read the excerpts from the beginning, middle, and end of "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.Passage A:Perhaps because I was spared, at ten, from the dictatorship my parents endured most of their lives, I often imagine what it must have been like for them growing up under the absolute rule of Generalísimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.Passage B:I knew very little about what was actually going on in the Dominican Republic. Whenever la situación on the island came up, my parents spoke in hushed voices.Passage C:Then I started to work on my second novel. My mother heard from one of my sisters that I was writing about the dictatorship. . . .. . . Days later, my mother called me up to tell me she had just finished the novel. "You put me back in those days. It was like I was reliving it all,” she said sobbing. "I don't care what happens to us! I'm so proud of you for writing this book.”

A
Alvarez shows how, throughout her life, she learned about the dictatorship from her parents' fear of and responses to it.
B
Alvarez wrote about life under the dictatorship, even though doing so ruined her relationship with her mother.
C
Alvarez shows how her lifelong fascination with her parents' life under the dictatorship was the basis for her writing.
D
Alvarez shows how her mother counted on her to someday write a novel about the dictatorship.
10

Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.Images of the dictator hung in every house next to the crucifix and Ia Virgencita with the declaration beneath: In this house Trujillo is Chief. The pale face of a young military man wearing a plumed bicorne hat and a gold–braided uniform looked down beneficently at my mother as she read her romantic novelas and dreamed of meeting the great love of her life. Sometimes in her daydreams, her great love wore the handsome young dictator’s face. Never having seen him, my mother could not know the portrait was heavily retouched.

A
The images of Trujillo portrayed him falsely.
B
Trujillo wore elaborate uniforms and headpieces.
C
Alvarez's mother wanted to meet Trujillo one day.
D
Young people dream about the person they will marry.

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