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Dinaw Mengestu, Home at Last

Dinaw Mengestu, Home at Last

Read Home at Last and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.

1. Where was Mengestu born?

Brooklyn

India

Ethiopia

Washington, D.C.

2. What feeling permeated Mengestu’s childhood?

the feeling that he should care about race and identity but he cannot muster the energy

a feeling of strong identity and belonging that originated from a deep-seated connection to his family and their ancestral home in Addis Ababa

a feeling of longing that stemmed from his renunciation of a culture and home as familiar to him as the word “home” itself

the oddly permanent feeling of having lost and abandoned a home he never knew

3. Where does Mengestu hope is a place for him “to redefine, to ground, to secure [his] place in the world”?

Washington, D.C.

Ethiopia

India

Brooklyn

4. What helps Mengestu feel at home in Kensington?

He is recognized and well-treated at the Bangladeshi restaurant he frequents.

He lives only a few miles from his parents’ home.

He meets and falls in love with his soul mate.

He joins groups of men for nightly chats.

5. Who is Mengestu watching when he stands on the corner of Church and McDonald in the early evenings?

an old gray-haired Chinese immigrant slurping noodles from a paper cup

dozens of Pakistani and Bangladeshi men gathered to drink tea and talk

a Latin girl in tight, black pants arguing with her muscular boyfriend

his father walking with his hands behind his back