1. Toni Morrison was born
a. Chloe Anthony Wofford
b. Antonia Wolfe
c. Antonia Chloe Morrison
2. Morrison experienced her first brush with racism in
a. Atlanta, Georgia
b. Lorain, Ohio
c. New York City
3. On whom did Morrison write her thesis for her Master’s
degree at Cornell?
a. Faulkner and Virginia Woolf
b. Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston
c. Mark Twain and Willa Cather
4. At what age was Toni Morrison when she wrote her first novel, The
Bluest Eye?
a. 20
b. 39
c. 45
5. As senior editor at Random House, Morrison nourished the
careers of several writers, including
a. Alice Walker
b. Terry McMillan
c. Toni Cade Bambera
6. The novel framed by the African-American vernacular tradition
of the flying African is
a. Sula
b. Song of Solomon
c. Tar Baby
7. "They came from Mobile. Aiken. From Newport News. From
Marietta. From Meridian. And the sounds of these places in their mouths make you think of
love."
This refers to
a. upper-class white southern girls
b. the northern black bourgeoisie
c. travelling black musicians
8. The three whores in The Bluest Eye represent
a. the worst of the black community
b. the victimization of black women
c. black women of independent means
9. He murdered his young lover, Dorcas, who had been unfaithful to
him . . .
a. Joe
b. Guitar
c. Ajax
d. Henry
10. In Song of Solomon, Pilate Dead is distinguished by her
lack of
a. a navel
b. breasts
c. a clitoris
11. In Sula, Shadrack tries to conquer his fear of death by
creating a
a. Day of the Dead
b. National Suicide Day
c. Death Day Marathon
12. The tale of the blind African horsemen who were said to have
been riding the hills for a century appears in
a. Paradise
b. Jazz
c. Tar Baby
13. We are made to understand, to forgive, when Sethe in Beloved
a. slits her baby’s throat
b. poisons her daughter
c. murders her family
14. The folks of Ruby liked to gather around
a. the Sofa
b. the Sink
c. the Oven
15. Soaphead Church got his name because
a. he was a troubled minister who seemed to have soap bubbles for brains
b. he lived in a church and sold homemade soap to the parishioners
c. he was a travelling preacher who pomaded his hair with soap
16. He accidentally drowned in a river . . .
a. Milkman
b. Chicken Little
c. Nero Brown
17. Identify the novel from which the following passages have been
taken; there is one from each of Morrison’s seven novels:
a. Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been
accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her
cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get
out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honey-moons. Two brothers shot each other on New
Year's Day. Trips to Demby for VD shots common.
_______________________
b. Girls can do that. Steer a man away from death or drive him right to
it. Pull you out of sleep and you wake up on the ground under a tree you’ll never
locate again because you’re lost. Of if you do find it, it won’t be the same.
____________________
c. Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a
house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was
something blessed in his manner.
_______________________
d. She was an evil conjure woman, blessed with seven adoring children
whose joy it was to bring her the plants, hair, underclothing, fingernail parings, white
hens, blood, camphor, pictures, kerosene and footstep dust that she needed, as well as to
order Van Van, High John the Conqueror, Little John to Chew, Devil’s Shoe String,
Chinese Wash, Mustard Seed and the the Nine Herbs from Cincinnati.
______________________
e. They looked at his skin and saw it was as black as theirs, but they
knew he had the heart of the white men who came to pick them up in the trucks when they
needed anonymous, faceless laborers.
_______________________
f. He thought about innocence there in his greenhouse and knew that he was
guilty of it because he had lived with a woman who had made something kneel down in him
the first time he saw her, but about whom he knew nothing; had watched his son grow and
talk but also about whom he had known nothing.
_________________________
g. "When all us left from down home and was waiting down by the
depot for the truck, it was nighttime. June bugs was shooting everywhere. They lighted up
a tree leaf, and I seen a streak of green every now and again. That was the last time I
seen real june bugs."
_________________________
18. The title Morrison had originally chosen for Paradise
was
a. Peace
b. War
c. Heaven’s Ground
19. In 1985 Morrison wrote a play that centered around
a. Angela Davis
b. Emmett Till
c. Rosa Parks
d. Oliver Brown
20. In her short story "Recitatif," an experiment in
communicating without using racial codes, Morrison portrays
a. two young girls of different races who develop a close bond in an
orphanage
b. two young basketball players of different races who learn something about cultural
similarities and differences while on a school bus trip
c. a young Midwestern boy and girl of different races who fall in love in the early 1950s
21. Match the characters: siblings, spouses, mothers/sons, lovers,
friends . . .
1. Claudia
2. Sethe
3. Jadine
4. Pauline
5. Violet
6. Consolata
7. Sula
8. Sydney
9. Miss Marie
10. Macon
11 Gideon
12. Margaret Street
13. First Corinthians
14. Eva
15. Deacon |
a. Steward
b. Nel
c. China and Poland
d. Henry Porter
e. Plum
f. Michael
g. Frieda
h. Ruth
i. Paul D
j. Ondine
k. Son
l. Reverend Mother
m. Cholly
n. Joe
o. Thérèse |
22. Identify the novels in which the following
places/settings appear:
a. the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio ___________
b. Lenox Avenue _______________________
c. Isle des Chevaliers____________________
d. Mr. Yacobowski’s candy store___________
e. Reba’s Cafe_________________________
f. the Convent _________________________
g. Sweet Home________________________
23. Morrison’s critique of classic American literature, Playing
in the Dark, centers around the way race and gender have defined American literature
and life. One of the writers she uses to illustrate her meaning is
a. Edgar Allen Poe
b. Herman Melville
c. Eudora Welty
d. John Steinbeck
24. In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in 1993 Morrison
relates the
a. folk story of an old, blind woman
b. myth of the flying African
c. tale of creation as told by a griot
25. She played Baby Suggs in the film Beloved . . .
a. Oprah Winfrey
b. Thandie Newton
c. Kimberly Elise
d. Beah Richards
Fiction