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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What Hollywood studio produced the film Carmen Jones?
(a) Universal Studios.
(b) Walt Disney Studios.
(c) Twentieth Century Fox.
(d) MGM Studios.

2. What is dehumanization of the Negro inseparable from?
(a) The loss of African American identity.
(b) The loss of Negroes to slavery.
(c) The loss of racial identity.
(d) The loss of our own identity.

3. What two big name magazines, popular in the African American community in the 1940s, are mentioned in the chapter entitled The Harlem Ghetto?
(a) Ebony and Essence.
(b) Essence and Jet.
(c) Ebony and Our World.
(d) Ebony and Jet.

4. What two stereotypical figures does the author portray as portraits of the Negro in America with laudatory and heinous qualities?
(a) Aunt Jemima and Othello.
(b) Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom.
(c) Aunt Jemima and Carmen Jones.
(d) Carmen Jones and Uncle Tom.

5. What novel does Baldwin criticize as a more modern piece of shallow propaganda from the Negro experience?
(a) Uncle Tom's Cabin.
(b) Carmen Jones.
(c) Black No More.
(d) Native Son.

Short Answer Questions

1. What negative stereotype does the character Carmen Jones perpetuate?

2. How does Baldwin describe literature on the subject of the Negro in America when it is written by Blacks?

3. What point of view does Baldwin use in this essay?

4. Baldwin believes that the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin should have been:

5. What type of accommodations were promised to the Melodeers prior to leaving for Atlanta?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Baldwin, how does an individual become an American? And what does this mean for African Americans?

2. How does Baldwin describe the social climate that existed when Richard Wright was writing Native Son?

3. Why is Baldwin living a bleak life in Paris before he befriends a man from New York?

4. How does Baldwin describe the American student colony in Paris?

5. How does Baldwin use Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin?

6. Why do you think Baldwin experiences a sense of melancholy after his father's death?

7. Why did ex-GIs question their identity while studying in Paris?

8. What is the significance of having the evil and immoral characters played by very dark complected Negroes in the film Carmen Jones?

9. Why did seeing the hotel monogram on the sheets mean nothing to Baldwin?

10. According to Baldwin, what is the legend of Paris? What is the legend's connection to reality?

(see the answer keys)

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