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

2. What is the occasion of Ellison's speech "Brave Words on a Startling Occasion?"

3. What specific folk art form does "Black Boy" reflect?

4. Where is the essay "Stephen Crane and the Mainstream of American Fiction" published?

5. How does Ellison describe Wright's autobiography "Black Boy?"

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What does Ellison compare Wright's personal journey of blooming to?

3. What writers are at issue in the exchange between Irving Howe and Ralph Ellison?

4. What does the Negro say when white America holds up twentieth century fiction and say "this is the American reality?"

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

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

7. What is different about Oklahoma and the relationship of different races when compared to the South or even to Texas?

8. Ellison originally wanted to be a musician. What changed for him?

9. What is Ellison's basic quarrel with Hyman?

10. What is the "hidden name" Ellison is referring in the title of his speech to the Library of Congress in 1064?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who is Stephen Crane and why is Ellison so interested in him? What is it about Crane's style of writing that is important to Ellison's thinking about good writing? What does Crane do that makes him unique? Clearly Ellison holds Crane up as a great model for all novelists who follow. Is it Crane's technique, his ability to write in such specific ways, what impresses Ellison or is it Crane's willingness to look into the heart of the American culture and see what is there?

Essay Topic 2

In "Living with Music" Ellison literally finds himself overwhelmed by the group of people who live around him. His struggle to find his own peace within a larger and very noisy society is a metaphor for the way he sees the individual constantly struggling against the group in life. How does he find peace? What method does he use to carve out his space and literally "be heard?"

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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