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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 the story that opens "The Nobel Lecture in Literature," what do the children ask the old woman about?
(a) A bird.
(b) Love.
(c) A baby.
(d) Death.

2. Morrison claims that after WWII, the language used to discuss war became more what?
(a) Elevated and heroic.
(b) Persuasive and subtle.
(c) Childish and simplistic.
(d) Propagandistic and angry.

3. In "Unspeakable Things Unspoken," Morrison credits what group with beginning to open up the canon?
(a) Immigrants.
(b) Black writers.
(c) Feminist scholars.
(d) The American academy.

4. According to "Harlem on My Mind," the term "postblack" refers to whom?
(a) Black artists who want their art to be evaluated by aesthetic standards only--not classified according to their race.
(b) Critics who refuse to evaluate Black art according to the aesthetics of the Black community.
(c) Critics who make race the key factor in their analysis of works of art.
(d) Black artists who distance themselves from Blackness by identifying with white culture.

5. In "The Future of Time," Morrison points to what two forces as responsible for our modern relationship to the future?
(a) Science and technology.
(b) Secularism and the Cold War.
(c) Women's Liberation and the Civil Rights Movement.
(d) Religion and literature.

Short Answer Questions

1. In "The Site of Memory," Morrison remarks on the absence of what in slave narratives?

2. In "The Future of Time," what does Morrison say it seems like "the future" means to people today?

3. In her "James Baldwin Eulogy," Morrison makes an allusion to what Biblical story?

4. In her "Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address," Morrison says that when you hate you become what?

5. In "Gertrude Stein and the Difference She Makes," what element does Morrison say is an aspect of the European American response to chaos lacking in the indigenous response?

(see the answer key)

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