Read this excerpt from "Gravity" by Judith Ortiz Cofer.
"Lock the door behind me, will you, Elenita," she said, her
voice soft and sad. I nodded as she walked away without a
glance back at me.
An hour or so later I found myself looking through my
closet for a reasonable compromise between taffeta and
denim.
Which statement best describes the intended aesthetic impact of this
excerpt?
O
A. By having Elenita's mother leave without looking at her, the author
rebukes Elenita, leaving the reader disappointed at her behavior.
O
B. By describing the voice of Elenita's mother as soft and sad, the
author emphasizes her hurt, leaving the reader sympathetic to her.
O
C. By having Elenita look for a compromise between the fabrics, the
author emphasizes her remorse.
O
D. By showing Elenita to have a change of heart about going to the
dance, the author emphasizes the coming of age theme.

B. By describing the voice of Elenita's mother as soft and sad, the

author emphasizes her hurt, leaving the reader sympathetic to her.

Explanation:

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.