English Exam 2 Questions
Based on what we learned today about frame narratives, which of the following folktales that we read for last week also utilizes a frame narrative?
"The Wonderful Tar Baby Story" recorded by Joel Chandler Harris
Jazz poetry, as frequently employed by Langston Hughes, is written in:
Free verse
"Black Art" by Amiri Baraka is written in:
Free verse form
Richard Bruce Nugent's short story, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" was probably described as an example of "sex radicalism" by Alain Locke because of its relatively explicit portrayal of:
Gay sex
Afrofuturism is best described as:
A black or Afrocentric version of science fiction
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, who is Linda Brent? Please select ALL answers that apply:
A pseudonym (or fictitious name) for the author of Incidents The main character in Incidents The narrator of Incidents
A good example of institutional, structural, or systemic racism would be:
A public school system in which black preschoolers are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white preschoolers
In "Riot," John Cabot is depicted as:
A self-important jerk
The two versions of the Sojourner Truth speech that we read for today were recorded and most famously published in: 1) a newspaper (the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1851) and 2) a biography of Truth's life (The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878--though this version first appeared in print in 1863). The original speech, however, was first delivered in 1851 at:
A women's rights convention
Phillis Wheatley was born and spent her early childhood in:
Africa
The narrator of Invisible Man is:
An unnamed first-person narrator
According to critic bell hooks, "communion" is the idea that African Americans should:
Be willing and able to communicate with one another
W. E. B. Du Bois defines double-consciousness in several ways, but NOT as
Being biracial, i.e. both white and black
The real reason that Bigger and his friends don't rob Blum's store is because:
Bigger is afraid
In the context of Native Son, "false consciousness" refers to:
Bigger's false belief that he can become as rich as white people if he just tries hard enough
In Wheatley's poem, the adjective "sable" means:
Black
Practitioners of the Black Aesthetic believe that:
Black art should focus on promoting Black pride within Black audiences
Which of the following ideas can be attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Black people were integrating into what he called "a burning house"
"Riot"--the first poem in Gwendolyn Brooks's three-poem series by the same name--is written in:
Blank verse
Which of the following statements about Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass is NOT true?
Both escaped slavery by disguising themselves as free Blacks.
Slave narratives were often preceded by frontispieces in order to:
Both of these
According to the film Ethnic Notions, blackface minstrelsy involved:
Both white and black performers darkening their skin with makeup to imitate African Americans
"A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" focuses primarily on the thoughts and feelings of:
Carolyn Bryant, the wife of Emmett Till's murderer
Booker T. Washington's famous "compromise" comes from a speech that he gave at the:
Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta
The way in which Janelle Monae's "Many Moons" video combines the imagery of a fashion show with the imagery of a slave auction is a good example of:
Defamiliarization
In "The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Audre Lorde argues that in order to include black feminist perspectives on and within feminist theory, white and black feminists need to start paying attention to their:
Differences
Intersectionality is best described as the idea that:
Different aspects of one's identity—including race, gender, class, and nation—mutually construct one another
Which of the following was a contributing factor to the Great Migration?
Disenfranchisement
The third phase of a slave narrative is
Escape
In "Riot," John Cabot's name is a reference to a famous:
Explorer
"A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" is written in the form of a ballad.
False
Based on our discussion of "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes would most likely agree with Alain Locke's claim that Harlem Renaissance writers should be concerned with winning "cultural recognition" from white readers.
False
In "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Audre Lorde argues that people should focus more on their common ground than on their differences.
False
In "The New Negro," Alain Locke argues that the Great Migration—the movement of more than a million African Americans from the South to the North in the early 20th century—was for the most part a step backward for African Americans.
False
In Langston Hughes's essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Hughes argues that he personally would like to be recognized as "a poet—not a Negro Poet."
False
Langston Hughes's poem "I, Too" is written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet.
False
When Jan says to Bigger, "Don't say sir to me. I'll call you Bigger and you'll call me Jan. That's the way it'll be between us," Bigger is relieved to be treated as an equal.
False
The speaker in "We Wear the Mask" is Paul Laurence Dunbar.
False, He is the author. The speaker is a fictional persona, like a narrator.
Like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs organizes her narrative around the concepts of literacy and physical force.
False, Jacobs organizes her narrative primarily around the concepts of sexual autonomy and motherhood.
"The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"* is the text of a talk that Lorde gave in 1979 at a:
Feminist conference
Which phase of the slave narrative does the beating of Aunt Hester most clearly portray?
First
William Lloyd Garrison wrote one of the two prefaces to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, saying, "I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements." For Douglass's readers, what made Garrison a trustworthy, reliable authority on Douglass?
He was a white abolitionist who was friends with Douglass.
"Sonny's Blues" contains a frame/embedded narrative (a story within a story): in it, the narrator's mother tells him a story about how the narrator's father witnessed the death of his own brother at the hands of drunken white men, and how she (the narrator's mother) watched him grieve. In telling the narrator this story, the narrator's mother is most likely drawing a comparison between the narrator and:
Her husband (who witnessed his brother's death) Her husband's brother (who died) Herself (who witnessed her husband's grief)
Naturalism is best defined as a form of realism in which:
Individual characters are unable to determine the outcome of their lives
Third Wave Feminism is defined by its commitment to:
Intersectionality
The image of the "ho" that many argue is commonly found in commercial hip hop songs and videos recalls and arguably renews which minstrel-era anti-black stereotype?
Jezebel
In the last paragraphs of "Sonny's Blues," the narrator comes to understand that the way he can really help Sonny is by:
Listening to Sonny's music
The printed version of Sojourner Truth's speech that is most likely to authentically represent her original speech is:
Marius Robinson's version
"Othering" is best defined as:
Marking marginalized groups as different/bad in order to present those in power as neutral/good
Richard Wright believes that black art should aim to:
Mobilize black readers by making them more conscious of the meaning of their lives
Stream-of-consciousness is a literary style that is used to represent interior thoughts and feelings and that is associated with:
Modernism
Historians often refer to the period immediately following the collapse of Reconstruction (so from about 1877-1919) as the:
Nadir
Based on our discussion of its epigraphs, the original intended audience of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was most likely:
Northern white women
Which of the following ideas can be attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois?
People cannot gain their rights by voluntarily throwing them away
An essentialist definition of racial identity describes racial characteristics as:
Permanent
Many 19th century stereotypes have persisted into the 20th and 21st century, including the Jezebel, who was seen as
Promiscuous
According to Alice Walker, the term Womanism is to feminism as:
Purple is to lavender.
By making the races of its characters ambiguous, "Recitatif" shows that:
Racial signs have no inherent or essential meaning; rather their meaning depends on their relationship to other racial signs
According to the film Ethnic Notions, the stereotype of the brute first arose during:
Reconstruction/Nadir
Booker T. Washington uses the phrase "In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress" as a metaphor to support:
Segregation
The way in which racial signs are understood to signify racial difference aligns with the theory of:
Social constructionism
Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, is set in:
South Side, Chicago
In Wheatley's poem, the phrase "Their colour is a diabolic die" gives us the perspective of:
The "some" who "view our sable race with scornful eye"
The idea of the New Woman most directly challenged the ideas associated with:
The Cult of True Womanhood
The story of the Flying Africans draws on which of the following real historical events?
The Igbo Landing mass suicide
In "Letter from a Region in My Mind," Baldwin describes a meeting with:
The Nation of Islam
Booker T. Washington was the founder and first president of:
The Tuskegee Institute
In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes expresses the idea that:
The desire to be received by white audiences as a "poet—not a Negro poet" requires poets to conform to white standards of identity and expression
According to critic Richard Dyer, what do stereotypes reflect?
The interests of those who create them
The controlling metaphor of "Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time is:
The rainbow
Which of the following more accurately describes the way that white authors such as Joel Chandler Harris used African American dialect in their 19th century writing?
They used misspellings and exaggerated grammatical mistakes to falsely characterize African American speakers as illiterate and ignorant.
Twyla and Roberta are BOTH certain that:
They wanted to join in on beating Maggie
According to the films we watched this week, the reason so many repressive things were done to African Americans in the aftermath of Emancipation was because:
Those in power had an economic and political interest in extending slavery by another name
According to Alain Locke in "The New Negro," what is one of the objectives of African Americans' INNER life?
To repair a damaged group psychology
Even though W.E.B. Du Bois was never enslaved, in one of the essays that we read for today, he makes a point of describing his own loss of childhood innocence.
True
If a critic described Invisible Man as an "homage" to The Souls of Black Folk, he or she would be describing the relationship between these two texts as an example of:
Unmotivated Signifiying
Plessy v. Ferguson was the Supreme Court decision that:
Upheld segregation laws
Which of the following ideas can be attributed to Malcolm X?
When African Americans are attacked, they should fight back in self-defense
The phrase "cast down your bucket where you are" is Booker T. Washington's controlling metaphor for which of the following ideas?
White and Black Americans should look to one another for labor/jobs
In "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,"* the primary audience Audre Lorde is addressing is:
White feminists
In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass states that he knows for certain:
Who his mother is
"Sonny's Blues" is most likely set during the Korean War, and in the most immediate aftermath of
World War II
In Ethnic Notions, the caricature of African Americans that is described as an "urban black dandy," one who attempts but fails to imitate white Americans in dress and speech is called:
Zip Coon
A euphemism is
a polite, indirect expression substituted for one considered too impolite or direct
The "politics of respectability" is best described as:
a political strategy that hopes to protect individuals by demanding they conform with standards set by wider society
Modernism is a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic styles and forms and primitivism is the idea that certain peoples are closer to nature, more sensual, and less civilized than others .
a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic styles and forms, the idea that certain peoples are closer to nature, more sensual, and less civilized than others
According to Alain Locke in "The New Negro," what is one of the objectives of African Americans' INNER life?
a stereotype created and perpetuated by white people
According to Alain Locke, the Old Negro is:
a stereotype created and perpetuated by white people
Near the end of "Sonny's Blues," the narrator observes that: "The light from the bandstand spilled just a little short of them and watching them laughing and gesturing and moving about, I had the feeling that they, nevertheless, were being most careful not to step into that circle of light too suddenly; that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in flame." The "light from the bandstand" is best understood as:
a symbol
A double entendre is
a word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is risqué or indecent
Afrocentrism is
a worldview dedicated to affirming the history and cultural heritage of the African diaspora (descendants of the people of Africa).
Unmotivated signifyin(g) signals
admiration and respect
A Shakespearean Sonnet, as frequently employed by Claude McKay, contains:
an ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme
In Toi Derricotte's poem, "On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses," the line Last week on TV, a gruesome face, eyes bloated shut. makes use of:
an end-stopped line
Racial signs are
any symbol that is socially constructed to signify racial difference
Countee Cullen's "Incident" is written in the form of a:
ballad
whereas motivated signifyin(g) signals
disagreement or critique
The film Ethnic Notions argues that the "Mammy" figure:
downplayed or denied the sexual abuse of female slaves.
Native Son uses free indirect discourse to:
enable us to both sympathize with Bigger and be critical of him
In Toi Derricotte's poem, "On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses," the lines Her gaze shoots past him to nothing. Nothingis explained. How many black women makes use of:
enjambment
"Recitatif" is a story told in:
five acts.
Gwendolyn Brooks left her white publisher for a Black publisher for several reasons, but NOT to:
free herself from a toxic relationship with her white editor.
In the Fire Next Time, James Baldwin shows that he is most interested in:
helping integrationists and Black separatists understand each other
Mamie Bradley's purpose in having an open casket funeral for Emmett Till is best described as an effort to:
invite the witnessing of Black suffering
African American folktales are an essential part of our literary history, but printing an oral tradition comes with disadvantages. One concern some scholars have about printing the folktales is:
it is difficult to recreate on the page the improvisational and collective storytelling experience
In the following two lines from Toi Derricotte's poem, "On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses," numbered below as line 1 and 2, 1. Is is any wonder I walk over these bodies2. pretending they are not mine, that I do not know there is a caesura in:
line 2
In Invisible Man, the term "invisibility" is best understood as a metaphor for the effects of racism .
metaphor, racism
"A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" could be described as signifyin(g) on the classic form of the fairy tale. The poem's relationship to such fairy tales is best described as a form of:
motivated signifyin(g) (signaling disagreement or critique)
Wheatley's poem compares "Negros" (and possibly Christians) to Cain, who:
murdered his brother
The length of time between the Brown v. Board decision overturning school segregation and the Martin Luther King's March on Washington was about:
nine years
Praise poetry is an aesthetic form originating in South Africa that expresses public admiration or approval of an individual. . Toasts are an aesthetic form developed in the American South in which practitioners tell boasting stories about "bad" individuals. .
oh yeah
agency is defined as
one's independent capability �or ability to act on one's will
"Sonny's Blues" is best described as:
realist
The murder of Emmett Till happened:
relatively early in the Civil Rights Movement
The narrator of "Sonny's Blues" works as a:
school teacher
Which of the following is NOT one of the traits valued by the Cult of True Womanhood
seductiveness
Naturalism draws readers' attention to literary form via intertextuality and experimentation , whereas modernism seeks to convince readers of the reality of the world it is representing .
seeks to convince readers of the reality of the world it is representing, draws readers' attention to literary form via intertextuality and experimentation
Jacobs hid from her master in her grandmother's attic for a total of:
seven years
In the line "Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain," Wheatley most likely used a series of commas rather than clearer types of punctuation because:
she wanted to keep her true meaning hidden from potentially hostile white readers
A legend is a
story that, while not verifiable, is handed down and accepted as having some basis in historical fact
A myth is a
symbolic story usually involving Gods to explain a cultural practice or phenomena
According to Ida B. Wells, which of the following did white Southerners use as an excuse to lynch African Americans:
that they were avenging African American assaults on women
Freedom is defined as
the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
The title of Lucile Clifton's poem, "4/30/92 for rodney king" refers to the date that:
the day after police were acquitted of beating Rodney King
When scholars refer to the "Hip Hop Wars," they are referring to:
the debate over whether Hip Hop culture should be seen as liberatory or repressive
The Triangular Trade is the term used to describe
the exchange of raw materials, manufactured goods, and people across the Atlantic Ocean
the Middle Passage is the term used to describe
the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas
Pan-Africanism is
the idea that people of African descent have common interests and should be unified or allied with one another.
"A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" focuses primarily on the thoughts and feelings of:
the mother from Mississippi
In a sentence, an ellipsis usually represents:
the omission of one or more words; something left out
Colorism is:
the prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their skin color
Second-person narration is when:
the reader or addressee becomes the main character, addressed as "you" throughout the story and being immersed in the narrative.
According to the films and lectures we watched today, which of the following is NOT one of the direct effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade:
the rise of the practice of indentured servitude
Stigma is
the social disapproval of anyone/thing perceived as differing from cultural norms
A trickster figure is physically weak and cunning
true
Although they define it differently, both Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois value education as a pathway to greater freedom.
true
Modernism is a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic styles and forms and primitivism is the idea that certain peoples are closer to nature, more sensual, and less civilized than others .
true
The real name of the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is Harriet Jacobs . The pseudonym of the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is Linda Brent .
true
Witnessing requires that one:
views a shocking event in order to raise awareness for social change
Free indirect discourse is:
when a narrator presents the thoughts of a fictional character as if from that character's point of view
In "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. argues that Black people's greatest stumbling block in their stride toward freedom may be:
white moderates
double entendre is
word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is risqué or indecent
An archetype is a widely held but fixed and over-simplified image of a particular type of person . A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and over-simplified image of a particular type of person .
yo true