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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 2, Sound and the Mainstream, Section 4.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Ellison say slaves had in place of freedom?
(a) Early death, disease, drunkenness.
(b) Blues, spirituals, jazz.
(c) Dementia, mental illness, emptiness.
(d) Suffering, despair, darkness.

2. Where is the book review "Blues People" published and when?
(a) Tukumpsee Reader, 1930.
(b) New York Review, 1964.
(c) Cleveland Times, 1974.
(d) Saturday Review, 1945.

3. Is Ellison interested primarily in injustice or art?
(a) Both equally.
(b) Art.
(c) Injustice.
(d) Neither.

4. Where is Richard Wright born?
(a) On a Mississippi plantation.
(b) In the New York City Negro hospital
(c) In a log cabin located in the heart of Nebraska.
(d) On a train as it traveled from Georgia to Maine.

5. How does Ellison describe Wright's autobiography "Black Boy?"
(a) An angry young man's immoderate tale of delusion.
(b) The Negro answer to "Huckleberry Finn."
(c) Another failed attempt to pierce the great wall between races.
(d) A non-white intellectual's statement of his relationship with Western culture.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Ellison reading when he begins writing "Invisible Man?"

2. What does Jones analyze "bop" as?

3. What does the phrase "to finger its jagged grain and to transcend it" refer to?

4. Why are slaves able to express themselves in art?

5. When does Jones place the beginnings of the blues?

(see the answer key)

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