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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In her "Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address," Morrison says that one of her aims is to do what?
(a) Reassure.
(b) Remember.
(c) Provoke.
(d) Criticize.

2. In "Black Matter(s)," Morrison says that a key "absence" in writing about racism is the omission of its impact on whom?
(a) Future generations.
(b) Women.
(c) Perpetrators.
(d) Non-Black minorities.

3. To whom does Morrison address her remarks about the dead of September 11, 2001?
(a) To the terrorists responsible for the deaths.
(b) To all Americans.
(c) To the families of the dead.
(d) To the dead themselves.

4. In "Literature and Public Life," Morrison says that the public interest has been redefined as what?
(a) Extremism.
(b) Private interest.
(c) Class warfare.
(d) Special interests.

5. In "Race Matters," Morrison creates a metaphorical comparison between "race-specific, race-free" language and what?
(a) Civil rights actions like the Selma bridge march.
(b) A borderless, safe, outdoor space.
(c) A church.
(d) Romantic love.

6. In "The Future of Time," Morrison worries that we increasingly turn to the past for what?
(a) Answers to current problems.
(b) Evidence to confirm our biases.
(c) Visions of what our future could be.
(d) Philosophical wisdom.

7. In "The Future of Time," what does Morrison say it seems like "the future" means to people today?
(a) Infinity.
(b) 20-40 years from now.
(c) Nothing at all.
(d) Despair.

8. In "Cinderella's Stepsisters," Morrison's central claim is that women should not do what?
(a) Undermine feminism by being too nurturing.
(b) Participate in corrupt institutions.
(c) Oppress other women.
(d) Risk the gains women have made by trying to move forward too quickly.

9. Morrison's discussion of Huckleberry Finn in "Black Matter(s)" is intended as an illustration of what?
(a) Historical accuracy in fiction.
(b) The shadow of Puritanism in fiction.
(c) American Africanism.
(d) Gothic Romanticism.

10. 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.

11. "The War Against Error" is a fifteenth and sixteenth century effort to eliminate what kind of error?
(a) Philosophical thinking that questioned the power of the state.
(b) Religious beliefs that differed from community norms.
(c) The acceptance of Africans into European society.
(d) Movements against genocide and ethnic cleansing.

12. Store displays arranged to look like the interiors of houses and the interiors of houses arranged to look like store displays is an example Morrison gives of which aspect of globalism?
(a) Corporate control of formerly public spaces.
(b) The boundless creation of wealth.
(c) The erasure of the line between public and private.
(d) Its division of people into "center" and "margin."

13. In "The Nobel Lecture in Literature," What does Morrison refer to with the phrase "tongue-suicide"?
(a) The willingness to ban and destroy books.
(b) Lying.
(c) A refusal to speak for what is right.
(d) The death of language.

14. Where does Morrison say we erroneously turn for answers to contemporary social problems?
(a) The past.
(b) Religion.
(c) Literature.
(d) Science.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. In "The Individual Artist," why does Morrison say that the romantic vision of the artist is a "Procrustean bed"?

2. In "Literature and Public Life," Morrison opens by joking that because she was once a student at the place she is now speaking, what might happen after her speech?

3. In "The Nobel Lecture in Literature," Morrison compares the old woman in the story to what?

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

5. Which of the following is a key characteristic of globalism, according to Morrison?

(see the answer keys)

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