A Sunny Place for Shady People Quiz

Quiz: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

This 20-question quiz covers all stories in the collection, mixing multiple-choice and short-answer formats. Use the outline and your reading to select the best answer.

Plot and Sequence (8 questions)

1. In "My Sad Dead," what is the correct sequence of events after Emma sees Matías Cremonesi's ghost?

   • A) She soothes him, then he disappears, and she moves away.
   • B) She refuses to open the door, then later goes to the slum to find his body.
   • C) She opens her door but does not soothe him, holding the neighborhood accountable.
   • D) She calls the police, who arrest the killers, and Matías rests.

2. In "A Sunny Place for Shady People," what event happens immediately before the narrator witnesses P-22, the mountain lion?

   • A) She injects a homeless red-haired boy with drugs on the street.
   • B) She attends the second night of the ritual on the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel.
   • C) She moves out of the Biltmore Hotel and stays with Isa and Jenny.
   • D) She visits the Last Bookstore and buys a book.

3. In "Face of Disgrace," what is the first symptom Alex notices, leading her to the doctor?

   • A) She loses her sense of smell.
   • B) She wakes with facial paralysis (Bell's palsy).
   • C) She sees the faceless man in her mirror.
   • D) She finds a whistle in her bed.

4. In "Julie," what is the final step the narrator takes to help her cousin?

   • A) She takes Julie to a public hospital.
   • B) She sends Julie back to Vermont with her parents.
   • C) She arranges for Julie to join the Marjorie Cameron Church in the Desert in Uruguay.
   • D) She finds a psychiatrist who prescribes new medication.

5. In "Night Birds," what does Millie do after their grandmother hangs the cat Jeanne?

   • A) She leaves immediately for Buenos Aires.
   • B) She paints portraits of the grandmother wearing the dead cat.
   • C) She kills the grandmother in revenge.
   • D) She buries the cat and stops painting.

6. In "Metamorphosis," what does the narrator do with the largest fibroid after her hysterectomy?

   • A) She donates it to a medical university.
   • B) She has it fused with silicone and implanted along her spine.
   • C) She buries it in a forest.
   • D) She throws it in the hospital trash.

7. In "The Refrigerator Cemetery," what happens when Clarisa returns to the site as an adult?

   • A) She finds Gustavo's skeleton and calls the police.
   • B) She finds only rotted clothes, then gets trapped inside the cemetery.
   • C) She meets Daniel there and they reconcile.
   • D) She discovers the refrigerator has already been cleared.

8. In "A Local Artist," what is Yolk revealed to be?

   • A) A man in a costume who paints with his feet.
   • B) A boneless, worm-like creature born after the train station closed.
   • C) A ghost of a painter who died in a fire.
   • D) A mechanical puppet operated by the townspeople.

Character Motivation (5 questions)

1. Why does Emma in "My Sad Dead" refuse to comfort the ghost of Matías, even though she has the power to calm spirits?

   • Short answer (1 sentence):

2. Why does the narrator in "Julie" risk helping her cousin escape to Uruguay, despite knowing her aunt and uncle will consider Julie dead?

   • Short answer (1 sentence):

3. In "Face of Disgrace," why is Alex determined to tell her daughter Magnolia the family secret before she fully vanishes?

   • Short answer (1 sentence):

4. In "Metamorphosis," what motivates the narrator to undergo the extreme body modification with her fibroid?

   • Short answer (1 sentence):

5. Why does Clarisa, decades later, return alone to the refrigerator cemetery in the story of that name?

   • Short answer (1 sentence):

Theme and Symbol (4 questions)

1. What does the faceless man primarily symbolize in "Face of Disgrace"?

   • A) The erasure of identity caused by inherited trauma.
   • B) The randomness of supernatural evil.
   • C) A metaphor for mental illness.
   • D) The anonymity of urban violence.

2. In "My Sad Dead," what do the ghosts of the murdered teenage girls represent?

   • A) A literal haunting of the neighborhood.
   • B) A moral reckoning for collective inaction.
   • C) Emma's grief for her mother.
   • D) The decay of the city.

3. In "A Sunny Place for Shady People," the mountain lion P-22 is repeatedly associated with the narrator's dead boyfriend Dizz. What does P-22 come to symbolize for the narrator?

   • A) The destructive power of nature.
   • B) The soul of the city and a form of spiritual visitation.
   • C) The danger of urban wildlife.
   • D) A reminder of her own addiction.

4. What is the central tension explored in "Metamorphosis" regarding the narrator's body?

   • A) The conflict between medical authority and personal bodily autonomy.
   • B) The shame of aging and menopause.
   • C) The choice between cosmetic surgery and natural healing.
   • D) The bond between female friends.

Synthesis (3 questions)

1. Compare the function of ghostly beings in "My Sad Dead" and "Julie." What does each story suggest about the living's responsibility toward the dead or the "visited"?

   Short answer (2-3 sentences):

2. Both "Hyena Hymns" and "Different Colors Made of Tears" link past violence with present horror. How does each story connect historical trauma (dictatorship-era torture in "Hyena Hymns" and misogyny in "Different Colors") to its supernatural events?

   Short answer (2-3 sentences):

3. In "A Sunny Place for Shady People," the Argentine journalist's personal grief over Dizz is intertwined with the public mystery of Elisa Lam. What does this connection imply about the way we process loss in contemporary society?

   Short answer (2-3 sentences):

Answer Key

1. C. Emma opens her door but does not soothe the ghost, choosing to hold the neighbors accountable for their cowardice.

2. C. The narrator first moves out of the Biltmore to stay with Isa and Jenny in Laurel Canyon, and that same night they encounter P-22.

3. B. Alex wakes with facial paralysis, later diagnosed as Bell's palsy, which is the first sign of her features beginning to disappear.

4. C. The narrator researches online and finds the Marjorie Cameron Church in the Desert, then arranges for Julie to join a branch in Uruguay, where Rolf welcomes her.

5. B. Millie paints portraits of their grandmother wearing the dead cat Jeanne, then plans revenge but never acts on it.

6. B. The narrator has part of the fibroid fused with silicone and implanted along her spine, creating a dragon-like ridge.

7. B. Clarisa finds only rotted clothes, and when she tries to leave, the gate has vanished; a barefoot man appears, and she reaches out her hand, unable to escape.

8. B. Yolk is a boneless, worm-like creature born from a local woman after the train station closed; the townspeople worship him.

9. Emma refuses to comfort Matías because she wants the neighborhood to feel guilty for not helping him when he was alive, using his ghost as a form of moral reckoning.

10. The narrator helps Julie escape because she believes Julie's experiences with spirits are real and sees the family's plan to commit her as a betrayal; she chooses freedom over institutionalization.

11. Alex races to tell Magnolia the secret to break the cycle of the curse and warn her daughter about the faceless man, hoping to prevent the same erasure.

12. The narrator undertakes the modification to reclaim her body and transform unwanted flesh into something that gives her a new, loving relationship with herself, rejecting the silencing of the medical system.

13. Clarisa returns because the factory beside the cemetery is to be demolished, and she needs to retrieve Gustavo's remains to put an end to the secret they have kept for decades.

14. A. The faceless man erases features down the maternal line, symbolizing the transmission and erasure of trauma.

15. B. The ghosts of the girls and Matías appear because the neighbors failed to act; they represent collective guilt and moral accountability.

16. B. P-22 is described as the city's soul, and Isa suggests it brought Dizz back in feline form, symbolizing a spiritual visit that helps the narrator process grief.

17. A. The story focuses on the narrator's anger at being uninformed about recovery and her decision to take control through body modification, asserting autonomy against medical authority.

18. In "My Sad Dead," ghosts serve as moral agents that demand accountability from the living; Emma is their caretaker but withholds comfort to force change. In "Julie," the dead are loving companions; the story suggests the living should accept such relationships rather than pathologize them. Both stories challenge the idea that ghosts must be exorcised.

19. In "Hyena Hymns," the supernatural torture in the Aguirre Palace directly replays the violence of the dictatorship, linking ecological disaster (escaped hyenas) with political atrocity. In "Different Colors Made of Tears," Noah Seidel's cursed dresses store his misogynistic murder fantasies, so touching them inflicts wounds; the past hatred literally enters the present through objects, showing how violence is transferred across time.

20. The narrator's grief for Dizz—a private, haunting loss—merges with the public fascination with Elisa Lam, suggesting that collective tragedies can mirror and amplify personal sorrow. Both are processed through ritual (the water tank séance) and obsessive recounting, implying that contemporary loss often finds expression through shared, mediated mysteries rather than private mourning alone.