The Vanishing Half: A Novel

This flexible-use quiz is designed for reading comprehension assessment and activity needs in classroom, home-schooling and other settings. Questions connect to the text’s plot, characters, and themes — and align with the content and chapter organization in the rest of this study guide. Use quizzes as pre-reading hooks, reading checks, discussion starters, entrance/exit “tickets,” small group activities, writing activities, and lessons on finding evidence and support in a text.

Depth of Knowledge Levels: Questions require respondents to demonstrate ability to: 

1. Recall and Understand Content (e.g., who, what, where, when) 
2. Apply and Analyze Ideas (e.g., how and why)

1. Why is Desiree’s early career as a fingerprint analyst a powerful symbol in the novel?

A) She is able to have a career in DC that wasn’t available in Mallard.

B) She has agency in her work that she doesn’t have in her troubled home.

C) She seeks to understand her identity in relation to her twin sister.

D) She wants justice for her father’s death.

2. Why might the twin’s father’s death have an influence on Stella’s decision to permanently pass as white?

A) She has nothing left at home after he dies.

B) His death made her afraid of people enacting violence on her for being Black.

C) She saw him as weak and unable to stand up for himself.