Chinua Achebe grew up in Ogidi, an Igbo town in Nigeria, where his father worked for a Christian mission. Which feature of Things Fall Apart does this fact best explain?

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan writer, chose to write his later novels in Gikuyu rather than in English. Which concern in his work does this choice best explain?

Jose Rizal was a Filipino doctor who studied in Europe and wrote Noli Me Tangere in Spanish while living abroad. Which feature of the novel does this fact best explain?

Amado V. Hernandez was a Filipino labor union leader who spent years in prison in the 1950s. Which feature of his poems does this fact best explain?

Naguib Mahfouz lived nearly all his life in Cairo and worked for years as an Egyptian civil servant. Which feature of his novels does this fact best explain?

Murasaki Shikibu served as a lady-in-waiting at the Heian court in Kyoto. Which feature of The Tale of Genji does this fact best explain?

Lu Xun studied medicine in Japan and then gave it up to write, saying his country needed more than cures for the body. Which feature of his stories does this explain?

Bienvenido Santos spent many years living in the United States, far from the Philippines. Which feature of his stories does this fact best explain?

In a poem written in the first person, the speaker is always the poet's own voice.

A poem's speaker is a grandmother weaving a blanket in Banaue. The poet is a young man from Cebu. What does this show about poems written in the first person?

In a story set in Lagos, the narrator says market traders deserve no pity. The writer's letters show he supported a traders' union. What does this mismatch show?

A writer publishes a memoir of her childhood in Vigan and uses "I" throughout. Which statement about that "I" is correct?

A story is told by a ten-year-old boy in a fishing village in Kerala. What would a reader need before claiming the writer lived that life?

A poem's speaker is a soldier who says he is proud to have burned a village. Which claim does the poem by itself support?

"Tomas walks the stone walls of the terrace before the rains. His grandfather cut these steps into the mountain above Banaue." Which fact about the poet does NOT help explain this?

"Adaeze counts her last coins at a Lagos market stall. Two bus fares wait for her, and she can pay only one." Which fact about the writer does NOT help explain this?

"On the Delhi platform he watches families board the night train north, and thinks of the room he left behind in Kerala." Which fact about the writer best explains this?

"Each morning the old teacher sweeps the fallen leaves from the Kyoto courtyard, though the wind returns them by noon. This, he tells his pupil, is the lesson." Which fact about the writer helps LEAST?

A student writes: "The poet was born in Cebu, so this poem about Cebu must be true." What is wrong with this reasoning?

A poem describes pearl divers at work off the Sulu Sea. Which question about the writer's life would help most in reading it?