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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the danger if the Jes Grew becomes pandemic?

2. What image does Berbelang use to symbolize the gods Shango, Shiva and Quetzalcoatl?

3. What are Berbelang and the other Mu’tafikah drinking?

4. Where do Hinkle Von Vampton and Safecracker Gould look for the anthology that contains the Jes Grew?

5. When was the last time Jes Grew flared up?

Short Essay Questions

1. What changes does Peter Pick recommend for the Plantation House scene?

2. What is the Mu’tafikah’s plan?

3. Why does Woodrow Wilson Jefferson leave for New York?

4. What is Hinkle Von Vampton’s strategy for eliminating the Jes Grew?

5. How does Black Herman cure Earline of the possession by the scent of the lavender from the Black Plume?

6. What is the status of The Text?

7. What is PaPaLaBas’ practice?

8. What critique does Abdul Hamid make of PaPaLaBas?

9. How does Biff Musclewhite free himself after the heist?

10. What is the meaning when Safecracker Gould says that “the dances were difficult to write down” (p. 103)?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

One of the epigrams to Mumbo Jumbo, from James Weldon Johnson, says that “the words of the Jes Grew songs “were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody.” (p. 7). Who are the various different parties to whom the Jes Grew songs belong? Who embodies them, who participates them, and who renounces them? What makes the Jes Grew claim certain people and not others?

Essay Topic 2

Who is the audience for Mumbo Jumbo? What is the ideal reader for Mumbo Jumbo likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

Essay Topic 3

What would it mean to ‘write down the dance,’ in Mumbo Jumbo? What efforts are made, to record the gestures of the Jes Grew, and why does dancing elude and representation? How does Ishmael Reed address the irony of writing a novel about a dance that cannot be recorded?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 865 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample