• Describe the approach and organization of this essay.

73:

• Explain the opening sentence. What assumption(s) about the authors of hero tales does Abraham present?
• Where, according to Abrahams, can information about the "sex-specific expressive capacities of women" (73) be found?
• What does Abrahams mean by "presentational strategies and styles" (73)?
• What is "role theory"? "common-sense social structure"? "symbolic interactionists"?

74:

• What, according to Abrahams, is the difference between presentation and performance?
• What, according to Abrahams is a rap (or "acting a line")?
• What, according to Abrahams, is face?

75:

• What, according to Abrahams, is the difference between  filling and playing a role?

78:

• Where, according to Abrahams, is "the essence of the negotiation involved in asserting one's role" found for Black women?

79:

• Explain: Respectability "is an ideal-image that is conceived and put into action through a complex enactment of motives" (79). (See also 82).
• What, according to Abrahams, is the difference between how European Americans and African Americans handle opposition?

80:

• Explain Hegel's concept of aufheben. How, according to Abrahams, is this concept exemplified by African Americans?

81:

• How does Abrahams define "doing your thing" in the African American community?

82:

• What, according to Abrahams, is the difference between being respectable and being "uppity"?

83:

• How, according to Abrahams, do both Black men and Black women perpetuate the belief that Black men are untrustworthy?
• Explain: "just as men evince their badness in order to enhance their reputation, women will define the strength and force of their respectability by successfully contending against such men" (83).
• Where, according to Abrahams, is the "locus of responsibility" (83)?

84:

• Explain: "it is in the inevitable confrontation between these worlds [home and street] that a female is able to enact being a woman" (84).

85:

• Explain: "It is not this distinction of worlds that is distinctively black, ... but the types and styles carried on within and between the denizens of the two domains" (85).

87:

• Explain: "Being a mother does not make one a Momma" (87).

88:

• Explain: "One of the routines of respectability involves monitoring others' presentational techniques" (88).

89:

• In what ways, according to Abrahams, are "words between adults and children extremely restricted" (89)?
• How does this dynamic involve the emulation of the maternal figure?

90:

• In what ways, according to Abrahams, are children "encouraged from the earliest age to be aggressive, even hostile to Momma" (90)?

91:

• Why, according to Abrahams, is it true that "among blacks action (and talk) is constantly being judged, and generally from the perspective of respectability values" (91)?

92:

• Why, according to Abrahams, is giving money "one important way a man shows his respect for a woman" (92)?

93:

• Describe the two types of ways, according to Ladner, that "maturing girls operate in male-female situations" (93).

97:

• What, according to Abrahams, does signifying involve?

98:

• How, according to Abrahams, is "talking smart" the female equivalent of "talking shit" (98)?

99:

• What, according to Abrahams, is the difference between gossiping and bad-mouthing?

100:

• How, according to Abrahams, can means of defense against gossip "propose alternative interpretations of what is meant by behaving respectably" (100)?

101:

• How does Abrahams define respect here?