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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 Ellison's original choice of career?

2. How does Ellison describe his boyhood experience in Oklahoma?

3. What does Ellison believe writing is?

4. What are the three major section of the "Primer for White Folks?"

5. What does Ellison say good fiction is made of?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where do Ellison and Hyman divide in their understanding of black face minstrel performance?

2. Why does Ellison consider Stephen Crane to be such a great artist?

3. When Ellison accepts the American National Book Award for "The Invisible Man" what does he say that the award is recognizing?

4. What was Ellison's writing process for "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke?"

5. What were some of the catastrophic events which occurred in Wright's life?

6. How did a library for Negro persons emerge in Oklahoma City?

7. What does Ellison find so remarkable about Crane?

8. Though "Black Boy" presents a brutal and violent world, what else does it manage to convey about the young Wright?

9. What does Ellison critique about the authors included in the Primer?

10. What were the two greatest influences upon Crane's life, in Ellison's estimation?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In "Hidden Name and Complex Fate" Ellison reveals that it was his father, who died when Ellison was three years old, who chose for him the name of a famous white poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in doing so cast upon him a complex fate. What was that fate and how did it slowly reveal itself through Ellison's life? Why was it such a struggle to come to peace with? Why was it such a blessing and a curse?

Essay Topic 2

The final essay in the book was never published. It is a book review of the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal who was brought in by the Carnegie Foundation to study the "Negro problem." What is Ellison's primary reaction to the book? What is positive in Myrdal's assessment? What does Ellison object to? Why do you think the review was never published?

Essay Topic 3

Race relations in America have long been a central focus of our culture. In the introduction Ellison prepares the reader to enter this discussion with him. What kind of invitation does he present? What is the emotional tone and feeling of the introduction? What does Ellison reveal about his own perspective on race? Why is it one of the themes of this book of his writing?

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