Girls That Never Die Quiz: 20 Questions on Plot, Character, and Theme

Girls That Never Die Quiz: 20 Questions on Plot, Character, and Theme {#girls-that-never-die-quiz-20-questions-on-plot-character-and-theme} This quiz covers the full arc of Safia Elhillo's Girls That Never Die, from the 1990 birth scene in Maryland to the final stoning image in the closing chapter. Questions are grouped into four sections: plot and sequence, character motivation, theme and symbol, and synthesis. The complete answer key with explanations appears after the questions. If you want to review before attempting the quiz, see the book overview, the Q&A page, or the ending explained. ### Section 1: Plot & Sequence (Questions 1–8) 1. Multiple choice In the chapter “Final Weeks, 1990,” where and when is the narrator born? - A) December 1990, in Maryland - B) June 1991, in Cairo - C) December 1989, in Khartoum - D) January 1990, in New York City 2. Multiple choice According to the speaker in “How to Say,” what does the name Safia mean? - A) Pure - B) Brave - C) Beautiful - D) Blessed 3. Multiple choice In “On Eid We Slaughter Lambs & I Know Intimately The Color,” how does the narrator respond when the Uber driver questions her about drinking and smoking? - A) She confirms whatever he assumes to gain a moment of quiet - B) She argues with him about her rights - C) She asks him to stop the car and gets out - D) She tells him she is not Muslim 4. Multiple choice In the final “Girls That Never Die” chapter (44), what happens to the girl buried to the chest in red earth? - A) A flock of birds carries the stones away in their beaks - B) The crowd buries her completely - C) Her father rescues her - D) She escapes during the night 5. Multiple choice In “Girls That Never Die” (Chapter 34), what happens to the girl carried kicking from her father's house? - A) She is passed to another man who will name her and give her form - B) She runs away to a new country - C) She returns home the next morning - D) She becomes a singer 6. Multiple choice In “Memoir,” how long does the narrator stay in the apartment she loves before leaving? - A) Six years to the day - B) Three years - C) Ten years - D) One year 7. Short answer In “The Cairo Apartments,” what does the narrator find when she returns to Cairo years later searching for traces of the children she once knew? 8. Multiple choice In “Girls That Never Die” (Chapter 41), what happens when the speaker cuts her hair with a razor? - A) It grows back overnight - B) It stays short permanently - C) Her mother scolds her - D) She loses her name ### Section 2: Character Motivation (Questions 9–13) 9. Multiple choice Why does the speaker in Chapter 41 cut her own hair? - A) To defy the reputation system that polices her body - B) To look more modern - C) To impress a lover - D) To follow a fashion trend 10. Multiple choice In “A Rumor,” why does the speaker imagine that marriage could cure her? - A) She believes it could erase the bitter taste of shame and disgrace - B) She wants financial security - C) Her mother insists on it - D) She wants children 11. Multiple choice In “Memoir,” why does the narrator leave the apartment after six years? - A) She escapes with her life from a harmful relationship - B) She finds a better apartment - C) She is evicted - D) She moves back to Cairo 12. Multiple choice In “On Eid We Slaughter Lambs,” why does the narrator decide to confirm whatever the driver assumes about her? - A) She is exhausted and wants a moment of quiet - B) She is afraid he will hurt her - C) She wants to convert him - D) She is trying to be polite 13. Short answer In “Profanity,” why does the speaker respond to the stranger's blown kiss with insults and a crude curse? ### Section 3: Theme & Symbol (Questions 14–17) 14. Multiple choice What does the pomegranate symbolize in the book? - A) The female body, rupture, and blood - B) Wealth and prosperity - C) Religious devotion - D) Childhood innocence 15. Multiple choice What do the two epigraphs from Ol' Dirty Bastard and Sappho establish? - A) The theme of girls who never die and the fragmentation of female experience - B) A contrast between hip-hop and classical poetry - C) The narrator's love of music - D) A warning about mortality 16. Multiple choice In “Taxonomy” (Chapter 7), what does the “flower” euphemism represent? - A) The speaker's overflow and the family honor residing in a girl's body - B) A garden the speaker tends - C) The speaker's favorite perfume - D) A gift from her grandmother 17. Short answer In “Girls That Never Die” (Chapter 17), what does the image of “salt in the well” killing the whole village represent? ### Section 4: Synthesis (Questions 18–20) 18. Short answer How do the repeated “Girls That Never Die” chapters function across the book? 19. Short answer How does the book connect language loss to bodily autonomy? 20. Short answer What does the recurring image of cutting (hair, skin, fruit) represent across the book? --- ## Answer Key {#answer-key} ### Section 1: Plot & Sequence 1. A — December 1990, in Maryland. The chapter “Final Weeks, 1990” places the narrator's birth at 1:39 PM in a Maryland house, with her 23-year-old mother and 27-year-old father present. 2. A — Pure. In “How to Say,” the speaker notes that her name, Safia, means pure, a truth she carries even with her imperfect Arabic. 3. A — She confirms whatever he assumes to gain a moment of quiet. Growing tired in the dark, the narrator decides to confirm whatever the driver assumes about her just to gain a moment of quiet. 4. A — A flock of birds carries the stones away in their beaks. The chapter ends with a flock of partridge, nightjar, sparrow, avocet, lapwing, plover, ibis, heron, and gulls appearing, each bird carrying a stone in its beak, leaving the girl untouched. 5. A — She is passed to another man who will name her and give her form. The poem describes the girl as water that is shapeless without its bowl, passed to a man whose belonging will name her. 6. A — Six years to the day. The narrator leaves the apartment she loved after six years to the day, escaping with her life. 7. She finds nothing. The city she remembers has changed or was never truly hers, though sensory details like roasting corn and carved shutters remain vivid. 8. A — It grows back overnight. The speaker cuts her hair repeatedly, but it returns by morning, so she leaves hair on buses, at parties, and in pillowcases. ### Section 2: Character Motivation 9. A — To defy the reputation system that polices her body. The speaker cuts her own hair as an act of defiance against the rules she follows to protect her reputation, noting that “they cut the hair of disgraced girls so I cut it myself.” 10. A — She believes it could erase the bitter taste of shame and disgrace. The speaker imagines that marriage could cure the bitter taste she carries, treating it as a possible remedy for her disgrace. 11. A — She escapes with her life from a harmful relationship. After six years of loving a man without revealing her secret, she leaves the apartment, escaping with her life, and still checks his name periodically for an obituary. 12. A — She is exhausted and wants a moment of quiet. Growing tired in the dark, she decides to confirm whatever he assumes about her just to gain a moment of quiet. 13. She has inarticulate anger and only a small set of swearwords—mostly animal names—that she admits are insufficient for expressing real anger, so she reaches for the harshest profanity she knows, a crude curse invoking the man's mother. ### Section 3: Theme & Symbol 14. A — The female body, rupture, and blood. The pomegranate is splayed open like something that once was alive and remains, connected to the copper taste of cutting and the color of the speaker's sisters. 15. A — The theme of girls who never die and the fragmentation of female experience. The pairing of a contemporary hip-hop lyric with a fragment of ancient Greek poetry establishes the book's central concern with girls who persist despite harm, and the fragmented, translated nature of their stories. 16. A — The speaker's overflow and the family honor residing in a girl's body. The speaker overflowed and was called a flower, then shrank her body until her blood stopped, linking the euphemism to menstrual blood and family honor. 17. It represents the contamination of collective harm—one girl's forgotten story or disgrace poisons the entire community, just as salt dropped into a well ruins the water for everyone. ### Section 4: Synthesis 18. The repeated chapters build a cumulative portrait of girls who are harmed, disappeared, or erased—through marriage, reputation policing, or collective violence—yet persist or are remembered. The refrain “girls that never die” shifts from a party image in the epigraph to a survival claim by the final chapter, where the stoned girl is saved by birds and the speaker declares she is “hanging out and partying with girls that never die.” 19. The speaker cannot name her own body in Arabic (Chapter 4), lacks words for her wounds, and knows only euphemisms for her tenderest parts (Chapter 31). This linguistic gap mirrors the ways her body is governed by others—through reputation, purity culture, and patriarchal control. The inability to speak about the body in her mother tongue parallels the silence imposed on girls about their own harm. 20. Cutting represents both violence done to girls' bodies (infibulation, the “pharaonic way” in Chapter 34) and the speaker's attempts at self-determination (cutting her own hair in Chapter 41). It also connects to language: the Arabic word for cut, when conjugated, is the name of one of her grandmothers (Chapter 8), and the speaker notes that the word for cut is replaced by the euphemism “purified.” Cutting thus links bodily harm, naming, and the erasure of female experience across generations.