African American Writers Quiz

Question: What writer was also the first African American to become a staff photographer for Life magazine?

Answer: Gordon Parks became the first African American staff photographer for Life magazine in 1948; he continued working for Life until 1972. His first work of fiction was the novel The Learning Tree (1963). He also wrote autobiographies, poetry, and essays, and he directed several motion pictures, including Shaft (1971).

Question: Who wrote Home to Harlem and Banjo to capture and express the vitality of urban American and European black vagabonds?

Answer: Claude McKay emerged in the early 1920s as the first voice of the Harlem Renaissance. In the novels Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929) he captured and expressed the vitality of the uprooted black vagabonds of urban America and Europe.

Question: What writer introduced the amateur detective Ezekiel (“Easy”) Rawlins?

Answer: Walter Mosley introduced Ezekiel (“Easy”) Rawlins, an amateur detective from the Watts section of Los Angeles, in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990).

Question: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved are novels by which writer?

Answer: Toni Morrison’s first novel was The Bluest Eye (1970); she also wrote Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987). She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Question: Who wrote the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Answer: Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel published in 1937. Its narrator, Janie Crawford, recounts her three marriages.