Hortense
What is the name of Hortense's father?
Lovell Roberts
What is Gilbert's role in his family's cake business?
He is a delivery driver/driver
What does Queenie's father do?
He is a butcher
What does Gilbert call the less sophisticated colony troops who come from not so large lands surrounded by water?
Small Islanders
Give one reason Hortense is angry with Gilbert when she arrives in England?
He does not go to meet her at the docks
His room is dirty
She is suspicious of Queenie
What relation is Michael to Hortense?
Cousin or foster brother
As a member of the RAF, what title does Gilbert have in the army?
Airman
Airman Gilbert Joseph
Her blue eyes/blonde hair
She thought she saw Michael
She saw a man who resembled Michael in the crowd
What metaphor is used concerning the house in Nevern street to express how Britain has been broken by the war?
The doorbell that does not work
What flower is the subject of a famous poem that Hortense recites?
Daffodil
Name ONE way in which Gilbert's pragmatic deal with Hortense is humilating or shameful.
He marries a woman that does not like him
Hortense pays for his passage to England
What is unconvential about Queenie?
She has no problem with being seen in public with black people.
Give TWO reasons so many Jamaicans and West Indians were prepared to volunteer for the British war effort?
Hitler's views on race
They saw Britain as the "Mother Country"
What shocks the black American GIs about Gilbert's experiences in the RAF?
He bunks/lives with six white men
Give one specific example of a cultural or linguistic understanding that Hortense has after arriving in England?
Taxi driver joke
Isle of Wight
Cat got your tongue
Cannot make chips
Name THREE ways in which Gilbert and Hortense are similar?
Educated
Ambitions hit a ceiling
Erudite - well spoken
Have trouble fitting in society
Suffer from discrimination
What is it that suggests to the reader that Gilbert is not the first black man to visit Queenie while in the countryside?
Arthur takes him back to the house
What is the name of the political figure holding the rally where Hortense and Gilbert first meet?
Busta
Bustamante
What is the hypocrisy of the colonial system?
The colonial people are expected to sacrifice themselves for the mother land. But, the people of the mother land know nothing about them.
Hortense leaves her mother from an early age and is brought up by her uncle's family. Her grandmother, Miss Jewel, lives with her as part of the domestic help. What pet name does she have for Hortense?
Me sprigadee
The novel begins in 1948, with Hortense arriving in London. At this time, what is Gilbert doing for a living?
Working in a sorting office
He is working in the Post Office
How is Queenie's attraction to black people foreshadowed during the novel's prologue?
She is fixated/obsessed/impressed by the African man's appearance at the Empire exhibition
Gilbert arrives in England on the Empire Windrush. The people who journeyed from the caribbean to England on this boat, and their descendants, are known as the Windrush generation. In the 2010s they were the victims of the Windrush scandal. Explain what this was?
They were granted full citizenship in 1971 but not the official paperwork that came with this. 30 years later they had trouble getting housing, medical care and some were even deported
How did the London Blitz contribute to British national myths?
It helped spread the idea that British people were stoically tough and could deal with trouble without much complaint