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Unit 1: Home & Family Final Assessment

Last updated about 5 years ago
30 questions
Note from the author:
Unit One Test
Excerpt from the memoir Always Running, written by Luis J. Rodriguez and published in 1993.

1 Our first exposure in America stays with me like a foul odor. It seemed a strange world, most of it spiteful to us, spitting and stepping on us, coughing us up, us immigrants, as if we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country. My father was mostly out of work. When he did have a job it was in construction, in factories such as Sinclair Paints or Standard Brands Dog Food, or pushing door-bells selling insurance, Bibles or pots and pans. My mother found work cleaning homes or in the garment industry. She knew the corner markets were ripping her off but she could only speak with her hands and in a choppy English.

2 Once my mother gathered up the children and we walked to Will Rogers Park. There were people everywhere. Mama looked around for a place we could rest. She spotted an empty spot on a park bench. But as soon as she sat down an American woman, with three kids of her own, came by.

3 “Hey, get out of there—that’s our seat.”

4 My mother understood but didn’t know how to answer back in English. So she tried in Spanish.

5 “Look spic, you can’t sit there!” the American woman yelled. “You don’t belong here! Understand? This is not your country!”

6 Mama quietly got our things and walked away, but I knew frustration and anger bristled within her because she was unable to talk, and when she did, no one would listen.

7 We never stopped crossing borders. The Río Grande (or Río Bravo, which is what the Mexicans call it, giving the name a power “Río Grande” just doesn’t have) was only the first of countless barriers set in our path.

8 We kept jumping hurdles, kept breaking from the constraints, kept evading the border guards of every new trek. It was a metaphor to fill our lives—that river, that first crossing, the mother of all crossings. The L.A. River, for example, became a new barrier, keeping the Mexicans in their neighborhoods over on the vast east side of the city for years, except for forays downtown. Schools provided other restrictions: Don’t speak Spanish, don’t be Mexican—you don’t belong. Railroad tracks divided us from communities where white people lived, such as South Gate and Lynwood across from Watts. We were invisible people in a city which thrived on glitter, big screens and big names, but this glamour contained none of our names, none of our faces.

9 The refrain “this is not your country” echoed for a lifetime.
Excerpt from the memoir Always Running, written by Luis J. Rodriguez and published in 1993.

1 Our first exposure in America stays with me like a foul odor. It seemed a strange world, most of it spiteful to us, spitting and stepping on us, coughing us up, us immigrants, as if we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country. My father was mostly out of work. When he did have a job it was in construction, in factories such as Sinclair Paints or Standard Brands Dog Food, or pushing door-bells selling insurance, Bibles or pots and pans. My mother found work cleaning homes or in the garment industry. She knew the corner markets were ripping her off but she could only speak with her hands and in a choppy English.

2 Once my mother gathered up the children and we walked to Will Rogers Park. There were people everywhere. Mama looked around for a place we could rest. She spotted an empty spot on a park bench. But as soon as she sat down an American woman, with three kids of her own, came by.

3 “Hey, get out of there—that’s our seat.”

4 My mother understood but didn’t know how to answer back in English. So she tried in Spanish.

5 “Look spic, you can’t sit there!” the American woman yelled. “You don’t belong here! Understand? This is not your country!”

6 Mama quietly got our things and walked away, but I knew frustration and anger bristled within her because she was unable to talk, and when she did, no one would listen.

7 We never stopped crossing borders. The Río Grande (or Río Bravo, which is what the Mexicans call it, giving the name a power “Río Grande” just doesn’t have) was only the first of countless barriers set in our path.

8 We kept jumping hurdles, kept breaking from the constraints, kept evading the border guards of every new trek. It was a metaphor to fill our lives—that river, that first crossing, the mother of all crossings. The L.A. River, for example, became a new barrier, keeping the Mexicans in their neighborhoods over on the vast east side of the city for years, except for forays downtown. Schools provided other restrictions: Don’t speak Spanish, don’t be Mexican—you don’t belong. Railroad tracks divided us from communities where white people lived, such as South Gate and Lynwood across from Watts. We were invisible people in a city which thrived on glitter, big screens and big names, but this glamour contained none of our names, none of our faces.

9 The refrain “this is not your country” echoed for a lifetime.
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RL 1 Which of the following describes the “barriers” the narrator refers to in paragraph 8?

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RL 2 How does the description of the narrator’s experience help develop a theme in the text?

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RL 4 Which of the following describe the tone of the selection?

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RL1 In the excerpt below from paragraph 5, what is implied by the statement “she was unable to talk, and when she did, no one would listen.” .

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RL 4 What is the meaning of the phrase “phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country” from paragraph 1? “coughing us up, us immigrants, as if we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country.”

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RL 2 Which statements from the text best support the theme?

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RL 1 Which of the following statements best describes Mama’s frustration?

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RL 2 Which statement most strongly develops a theme from the text?

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RL 4 What is the effect of the phrase “stays with me like a foul odor” to describe the narrator’s first experiences in America?

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RL 4 What is the impact of the American woman using a racial slur (spic) towards Mama?

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

1 The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

5 We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
10 Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
15 Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
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RL 1 What can be inferred about the speaker’s mother based on the second stanza?

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RL 2 Which lines from the poem support the theme?

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RL 4 Which group of words from the selection conveys the author’s attitude?

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RL 4 What is the meaning of the phrase in the second stanza “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself?”

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RL 2 Which of the following is an objective summary of the text?

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RL 1 What can be inferred from the lines below from the third stanza?
“At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle.”

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RL 1 What can be inferred from the the first two lines of the poem: “The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy;”

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RL 2 Which of the following lines best refines the theme of the poem?

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RL 4 What is the effect of the line “With a palm caked hard by dirt” in the third stanza?

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RL 4: WRITTEN RESPONSE - Using complete sentences and ACES, respond to the following question:
What is the tone of the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”?

“The Immigrant Grandparents America Needs” by Stacy Torres and Xuemei Cao from The New York Times

Stacy Torres is an assistant professor of sociology at the University at Albany, where Xuemei Cao is a doctoral student.

1 If you strolled by the playgrounds of Flushing, Queens, this summer, you would have seen throngs of Chinese immigrant grandmothers tending to their American-born grandchildren.

The moms and dads were at work, all through these long summer days. For those who cannot afford expensive day care and camps, in a country that does almost nothing to help working families care for their kids, grandparents are a lifeline. And increasingly, these grandparents are immigrants.

One of us, Xuemei, recently spent time with a Flushing family who moved here from rural China years ago. Each day the mother, father and grandfather board buses arranged by their employers to take them to work at Chinese restaurants. They leave their home around 10 each morning and return around 10 each night. In their absence, the grandmother performs all of the housework and cares for the couple’s two American-born grandchildren.

The Trump administration is now threatening those caretaking arrangements.

5 President Trump has been pushing for a law that would end family-based immigration — what he calls “horrible chain migration.” He even used the migrant children separated from their parents on the border as bargaining chips to try to get Democrats to agree to such a proposal, before a judge ordered them released to their families.

In June the House defeated a plan by Bob Goodlatte, the Republican Congressman from Virginia, that would have restricted legal immigration through the family reunification program so that only the spouses and minor children of American citizens could immigrate — barring grandparents. A week later, the so-called compromise GOP bill on immigration was also defeated. It would have effectively cut the sponsorships of spouses, minor children and parents of American citizens by about 215,000 over the next two decades, according to analysts at the Cato Institute. But Republicans haven’t given up.

The Trump administration’s determination to separate families has formed the backbone of its immigration policy since Day 1. These proposals reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of 21st-century American families and contradict the principle of family unity that has guided American immigration policy for the last 50 years. (In fact, a few weeks ago President Trump’s in-laws became American citizens thanks to the family reunification program.)

According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, the number of legal permanent residents admitted as parents of United States citizens has risen to about 174,000 in 2016 from about 56,000 in 1994, an increase to 15 percent from 7 percent of all admissions.

America needs these late-life immigrants. Older parents serve as valuable resources, often helping with the down payment on homes and with child care and household chores as younger immigrants juggle tight work schedules. Their assistance is free and reliable, allowing adult children to work, improve their English and further their educations, thus integrating faster into American society.

10 Another woman Xuemei spoke to, a retired doctor in her 80s from Fujian Province, hardly fits the Trump administration’s pernicious stereotypes of immigrants as threatening or burdensome. When her daughter-in-law gave birth here 20 years ago, she left her job in China so that she could come to help the young couple with child care. Her son, who had stayed in the United States after receiving a scholarship to medical school, sponsored her visa.

“I have only one son; how can I not help him?” she said.

Immigrant elders also help transplanted families maintain a sense of continuity. They may serve as cultural intermediaries by teaching grandchildren about their home country’s language, religion, food and cultural traditions. Their accounts of family histories can serve as a source of ethnic pride and personal empowerment for younger generations searching for their identities as racial and ethnic minorities.

Instead of narrowing our conception of what a family is, we should broaden it. When one of us — Stacy — was 16 and the oldest of four children, her mother died. Her father wanted to bring his niece from Chile to help the family out. But nieces didn’t count as eligible family members under the reunification program. So the family struggled along.

The support of family caregivers may be invisible to outsiders, but it is essential for the well-being of transnational families, especially in a country that lacks a system of affordable child care. The Republican plans to restrict family-based migration won’t help Americans — they will hurt Americans, by depriving many of our youngest citizens of the social, psychological and economic benefits of strong extended family ties.
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RI 1 According to the selection, why does America need late-life immigrants?

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RI 4 Which words could replace pernicious in paragraph 10?

"Another woman Xuemei spoke to, a retired doctor in her 80s from Fujian Province, hardly fits the Trump administration’s pernicious stereotypes of immigrants as threatening or burdensome."

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RI 2 Which statement best supports the central idea of the passage?

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RI 4 In the sentence below, which word could best replace the word “broaden?”

“Instead of narrowing our conception of what a family is, we should broaden it.”

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RI 1 Which statement best describes the contrast between President Trump’s immigration proposals and the nation’s long-standing immigration tradition?

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RI 4 Which word would be the best choice to replace “throngs” in paragraph 1?

"If you strolled by the playgrounds of Flushing, Queens, this summer, you would have seen throngs of Chinese immigrant grandmothers tending to their American-born grandchildren."

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RI 1 Which of the following lines best captures how grandparents help keep family memories alive?

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RI 2 In which of the following statements does the central idea begin to emerge?

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RI 4 What is the tone of the selection?

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RI 2 WRITTEN RESPONSE - Using complete sentences and ACES, respond to the following question:

Based on the article “The Immigrant Grandparents America Needs” by Stacy Torres and Xuemei Cao from The New York Times,” What is the central idea of the article AND how is it developed?

To respond to how the central idea is developed - consider what the author is doing - is she providing examples, statistics, expert opinions, anecdotes, compare/contrast, etc.