English 50 Trial

University of California, Santa Barbara
Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim
English 50: Mid-Term Exams
Time: 75 minutes.

Write on five of the following questions. You have fifteen minutes for eachresponse.

General Directions:
1. Be sure to identify the passage and the text from which the passage is taken, with name of author, ethnic community/national origin of author, title, genre ofpassage, and with any other forms of identification (historical context, brief summary of plot or reference to content)
2. Provide a brief close reading of the passage as a literary production, deployinghistorical and social contexts that may be useful in interpretation. Here are a few suggestions on how to develop your readings (do not attempt all these topics for every question; time is limited):a. Comment on (or rephrase) the theme embedded in the passage in relation to the larger work.
b. Describe some stylistic and figurative features in the passage, e.g. author function, narrativepoint-of-view, imagery, metaphor and symbol, plot structure, irony, conflict, character development, and so forth.
c. Discuss the topic in the broader frame of multiple Asian American literaryproductions and traditions.
d. Analyze the passage in relation to immigrant and ethnic histories and identity-formations, generational and gender issues, or social and psychological interpretations.1.
“If I were in China this minute
and running after a friend
spied across from the hotel
I was staying at

waving to him, say
calling his name in Mandarin
Still they’d know me—

the bodygiving the person away”

2.
“He gossips like my grandmother, this man
with my face, and I could stand
amused all afternoon
in the Hon Kee Grocery,
amid hanging meats he
chops: roast pork cutfrom a hog hung
by nose and shoulders,
her entire skin burnt
crisp, flesh I know
to be sweet,
her shining
face grinning
up at ducks
dangling singly file,
each pierced by black
hooks...