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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 2, Sound and the Mainstream, Section 3.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What childhood memory does Ellison draw on to deal with his artistic nemesis?
(a) Being forced to kneel and pray at church.
(b) Falling off a large statue.
(c) His father's death.
(d) Learning to play the trumpet.

2. What book does Hemingway believe all modern American fiction sprang from?
(a) Huckleberry Finn.
(b) The Bible.
(c) Moby Dick.
(d) The Red Badge of Courage.

3. Who interviews Ellison in "The Art of Fiction?"
(a) John Jacob & Nancy Kerry.
(b) Alfred Chester & Vilma Howard.
(c) Gertrude Whittall and T. S. Eliot.
(d) Donald Gibson and Bob Edwards.

4. In the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" what does Ellison say black face allows white America to do?
(a) See the Negro story from a different perspective.
(b) Pour out its hatred and fear in a theatrical form.
(c) Laugh and forget about its troubles and woes.
(d) Avoid looking at the shallowness of white American culture.

5. Why does Ellison begin the speech by referring to Ernest Hemingway?
(a) Hemingway once called Ellison by the wrong name, Emerson.
(b) The name Hemingway is a pseudonym.
(c) Hemingway is often misspelled and therefore hidden.
(d) Hemingway is a writer Ellison strongly identifies with.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where does Charlie Christian come from?

2. What type of jug does Ellison say Howe imagines Negro people to be in?

3. What does the phrase "to finger its jagged grain and to transcend it" refer to?

4. Why does Ellison choose to write "Invisible Man" in a non-naturalistic way?

5. What do people eat at Minton's?

(see the answer key)

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