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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 3, The Shadow and the Act, Section 1.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Ellison describe Wright's autobiography "Black Boy?"
(a) The Negro answer to "Huckleberry Finn."
(b) Another failed attempt to pierce the great wall between races.
(c) A non-white intellectual's statement of his relationship with Western culture.
(d) An angry young man's immoderate tale of delusion.

2. Where and when is the essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" published?
(a) Yale Literary Review, Winter, 1960.
(b) Partisan Review, Spring 1958.
(c) New Yorker Magazine, Summer, 1959.
(d) Life Magazine, Summer, 1958.

3. What does Ellison believe writing is?
(a) A way to criticize others.
(b) Mindless activity.
(c) Channeling of higher beings.
(d) Ethical instrument.

4. Falkner writes exclusively of the southern experience yet Ellison believes him to be addressing what?
(a) Inevitable rise and fall of every civilization.
(b) Nature of man.
(c) Northern Negro experience.
(d) Effect of war upon culture.

5. Where is the book review "Blues People" published and when?
(a) Cleveland Times, 1974.
(b) Tukumpsee Reader, 1930.
(c) Saturday Review, 1945.
(d) New York Review, 1964.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is Stanley Hyman's favorite archetypal figure?

2. What writers does Ellison wish had been included in the "Primer for White Folks"?

3. What type of jug does Ellison believe young Negro writers, such as himself, are in?

4. What assumption does Ellison start with when writing about Negro persons?

5. What is Ellison's reaction to the term "Negro culture?"

(see the answer key)

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