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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 6: Part II--God’s Language, including the essays “James Baldwin Eulogy” through “The Writer Before the Page”.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In "Race Matters," what word does Morrison call an unsatisfying and shallow ending for Beloved?
(a) Remember.
(b) Kiss.
(c) Audacity.
(d) House.

2. In "Black Matter(s)," Morrison speculates that slaves offered white Americans a sense of what?
(a) Power and authority they had been denied in Europe.
(b) Religious duty to the oppressed.
(c) Being monitored by their social inferiors.
(d) Permissiveness and freedom lacking in the Europe of that time.

3. John Gardner's novel Grendel uses the original story as a source for what?
(a) A feminist interpretation of Grendel's mother.
(b) A meditation on the nature of heroism.
(c) A retelling from Grendel's point of view.
(d) A psychological study of motherhood.

4. In "The Site of Memory," Morrison remarks on the absence of what in slave narratives?
(a) Historical accuracy.
(b) Sophisticated use of language.
(c) Details of everyday life on the plantations.
(d) Depictions of the narrator's interior life.

5. In "God's Language," what does Morrison say gets more attention than paradise?
(a) Money.
(b) Race.
(c) Power.
(d) Hell.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Black Matter(s)," Morrison says that immigration from the Old World to the New World is usually seen as what?

2. In "Moral Inhabitants," what is the list of American leaders meant to demonstrate?

3. In "God's Language," what does Morrison say seems more true the longer she writes?

4. In "The Price of Wealth, the Cost of Care," why does Morrison include a list of colonial conquests?

5. In "Grendel and His Mother," what omission from Beowulf does Morrison say is significant?

(see the answer key)

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