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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 does Gilroy say modernism relies on?

2. What does Gilroy say Richard Wright was ambivalent to?

3. What does Gilroy say slavery tried to do to tradition?

4. What did DuBois say was a central feature of slave culture?

5. How did Richard Wright want to present blacks in his books?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do Jews and blacks both resist the comparison of slavery and the Holocaust, as Gilroy describes it?

2. What are the three modes of thinking, seeing and being which DuBois says are the basis of double consciousness?

3. In what way was capitalist culture a kind of crisis in itself, Wright?

4. What idea was undermined, in Richard Wright's mind, by the violence of modern American culture?

5. What is the relationship between black and Jewish cultures, as Gilroy defines it?

6. What view of the black Atlantic does Paul Gilroy leave us with at the end of the book?

7. What is the importance of the theme of love and loss in black popular arts, according to Gilroy?

8. What did DuBois argue was the only way to deal with the brutality of modern civilized life in the South?

9. What, in Gilroy's account, was Richard Wright's thinking about racial identity?

10. What does Gilroy say politics did for black culture?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Does Paul Gilroy use contradictions or paradoxes to define the black Atlantic? Citing examples from the text and from the texts he cites, make an argument about whether the cultural forms and trends Gilroy describes are meant to be reconciled, or whether they are meant to persist in pregnant opposition.

Essay Topic 2

Write a character sketch of the author based on the style and content of his writing. What values does he hold dear? What are his hopes and fears? What kind of person do you think he is? Anchor your sketch in passages in the book.

Essay Topic 3

At the end of The Black Atlantic Paul Gilroy describes the challenges facing Western culture in the future. How is race related to these challenges, and do you think that this broadening of scope is a fitting gesture to close on? Does it cement Gilroy's narrative, or does it step aside from it?

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