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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. Morrison compares the Africa of the Western imagination to what legendary monster?

2. What does Morrison praise the National Endowment for the Arts for in "The Individual Artist"?

3. In "Race Matters," Morrison says that when she was younger she found something in writing that she could not find in life itself--what was it?

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

5. In her "Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address," what irony is Morrison's discussion of "Feed the Children" campaigns intended to illustrate?

Short Essay Questions

1. What current problems with arts funding does Morrison identify in “Arts Advocacy”?

2. In “The Habit of Art," why does Morrison allude to Antigone?

3. In “The Individual Artist," what is the paradox that Morrison says artists face?

4. In her "Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address,” how does Morrison define dreaming and why does she think it is important?

5. In “Moral Inhabitants," Morrison opens with some U.S. Census statistics. What are they and why does she include them?

6. In “Harlem on My Mind," what does Morrison point to as the causes of the failure of the New York Metropolitan Museum's 1968 exhibit on Harlem?

7. In “Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.," what does Morrison say that she wonders about MLK, and why?

8. In “Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.," what are the things that Morrison says Dr. King believed in?

9. In “Wartalk,” how does Morrison say that globalization differs from colonialism and internationalism?

10. In “A Race in Mind: The Press in Deed," how does Morrison connect the idea of "special interests" with the racial identification of subjects in news stories?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In “A Race in Mind: The Press in Deed,” Morrison introduced the motif of minstrelsy that will recur throughout her work. What is minstrelsy, and how does it relate to the ideas she explores of the “self” and the “other”?

Essay Topic 2

In "The Site of Memory," Morrison describes compromises that authors of slave narratives had to make in order to accomplish their goals. What were these compromises, what were the goals of slave narratives, and how did one make the other necessary?

Essay Topic 3

In “Black Matter(s),” Morrison argues that American literature and “Americanness” have been shaped by the slave trade and by racism against Black Americans. Explain how she supports this claim and then evaluate the strength or weakness of her argument.

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