The Beautiful Struggle

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. When Coates is being attacked by the group of kids in Chapter 1, he calls his father from a pay phone. What advice does his father give him?

A) “Stand next to an adult.”

B) “Fight with all you’ve got.”

C) “Run to the nearest grocery store and wait for me.”

D) “Tell them if they wanna live to see their next birthday—they better not mess with Paul Coates’s sons.”

2. When word spreads at school that Coates does not like to fight, who goads him on into a fist fight?

A) His arch nemesis, Georgi

B) His friend, Kwesi

C) His cousin, Johnson

D) His brother, Big Bill

3. Which of the following adjectives best describe Coates’s character, particularly at the beginning of the memoir?

A) Spacey and pacifistic

B) Foolish and rambunctious

C) Funny and spirited

D) Aggressive and depressed

4. What was the historic moment that prompted Coates’s father to join the Black Panther Party?

A) Rosa Parks’s bus boycott

B) The death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

C) The March on Washington in 1963

D) The death of Malcolm X

5. According to Coates, what is one of the biggest differences between his father and other members of the Black Panther party?

A) Instead of only embracing contemporary Black figures, Coates’s father embraces more ancient African ancestors.