1. In Chapter 28, Jefferson asks Grant a series of questions. What is the import of these questions and of Jefferson’s posing them at this point in the novel? Do these questions have any answers?
2. In Chapter 27, what does the conversation between Reverend Ambrose and Grant reveal about each and about the lives of their people? Are Reverend Ambrose’s accusations true and just? Is he justified in lying to his congregation, as he admits he has done over the years? What levels of meaning and import are established in this dialogue?
3. Read “The End of the Black American Narrative” and interpret how Johnson shifts the circumstances of African American creative writers from racial-political to class and broadly ethnic frames of analysis.
Contemporary Period, Continued
Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) pgs. 922-946
Charles R. Robinson (b. 1948) pgs. 1021-1031