Read the excerpts from The Namesake.Excerpt 1: He is afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn’t know. Who doesn’t know him. His parents tell him that they each have two names, too, as do all their Bengali friends in America, and all their relatives in Calcutta. It’s a part of growing up, they tell him, part of being a Bengali. Excerpt 2: It is nothing like the schooling Gogol’s parents have known, fountain pens and polished black shoes and notebooks and good names and sir or madam at a tender age. Here the only official ritual is pledging allegiance first thing in the morning to the American flag. Which statement best tells how the main conflict in the first excerpt is different from the main conflict in the second excerpt?
Read the excerpt from The Namesake.“Welcome to elementary school, Nikhil. I am your principal, Mrs. Lapidus.”Gogol looks down at his sneakers. The way the principal pronounces his new name is different from the way his parents say it, the second part of it longer, sounding like “heel.”She bends down so that her face is level with his, and extends a hand to his shoulder. “Can you tell me how old you are, Nikhil?”When the question is repeated and there is still no response, Mrs. Lapidus asks, “Mr. Ganguli, does Nikhil follow English?”“Of course he follows,” Ashoke says. “My son is perfectly bilingual.”In order to prove that Gogol knows English, Ashoke does something he has never done before, and addresses his son in careful, accented English. “Go on, Gogol,” he says, patting him on the head. “Tell Mrs. Lapidus how old you are.”Which line from this excerpt reflects the central idea that immigrants sometimes face discrimination and prejudice in their new culture?
Read the excerpt from "Finding Unity in the Alabama Coal Mines.”Nevertheless, the UMWA was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land.
Read the excerpt from "Finding Unity in the Alabama Coal Mines.”The southern state of Alabama was a stronghold for Jim Crow practices. Nevertheless, the UMWA was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land.
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