Under The Mesquite

Multiple Choice

1. A (All chapters)

2. D (All chapters)

3. B (Part 6, “At Abuelita’s House”)

4. A (All chapters)

5. C (All chapters)

6. D (All chapters)

7. C (Part 5, Chapter 25 “Mami’s Roses”)

8. B (All chapters)

9. A (all chapters)

10. D (Part 3, “To Be or Not to Be Mexican”)

11. C (All chapters)

12. B (Part 3, Chapter 24 “News”)

13. D (Part 5, Chapter 40 “Mi Madre”)

14. A (Part 6, Chapter 47 “In the Parking Lot”)

15. C (Part 6, “At Abuelita’s House”)

Long Answer

1. The mesquite is a symbol of Lupita’s resilience and ultimate ability to adapt to change. She admires how it grows through adversity (Part 5, Chapter 34 “Mami’s Home”) and feels that it is her “confidant” for her poems (Part 4, Chapter 31 “A Mesquite in the Rose Garden”). After Mami’s death, it is a symbol of strength for her, one upon which she leans until she finally embraces her own. (Part 6, Chapter 41 “Poems From Under the Mesquite”)

2. Before her cancer diagnosis, Mami is the matriarch of the family: She cares for eight children and is devoted to their welfare, nurturing, and attentive. Lupita analogizes herself and her siblings as clinging to “the withering stem of [Mami’s] waning life.” (Part 4, Chapter 25 “Mami’s Roses”) After Mami’s cancer diagnosis, Lupita takes over Mami’s role, caring for the children and running the household while Mami is at treatment in Galveston; it is then that Lupita learns how difficult motherhood really is, as she struggles to keep everyone fed and in line in her parents’ absence. (Part 4, Chapter 29 “Mother May I”)

3. At the beginning of the novel, Lupita sees “uprooting” as an unwelcome thing, connecting it to her feelings of displacement and disruption when Papi moves the family to the United States. (Part 2, Chapter 9 “Uprooted”) However, in the final poem of the novel, Lupita views her transition to college as a “welcomed uprooting” and connects it to her realization that change is necessary for moving forward and opening herself to new experiences in life. (Part 6, Chapter 47 “In the Parking Lot”)