Recognized as the one of the preeminent African American authors during his lifetime, Langston Hughes was a prolific poet, essayist, and writer of short fiction who was deeply committed to the power of literature, and in particular poetry, to transform people's thinking and thus change the culture. Elizabeth alexander argues that, among Hughes’s myriad efforts to shape the canon of African American literature that was emerging in his lifetime, including tireless championing of young writers and working to expand the audience for all forms of African American literature, his anthology New Negros Poets: USA, published in 1964, is his most important. Since at this time anthology of American generally excluded the work of African American, Alexander suggests that Hughes intention included not only to present African American poetry to a wider audience but to also establish the lineaments of the genre.
While acknowledging the difficulties Hughes faced this task Alexander researched his correspondence to discover serval post who complained of his selection and Hughes’s replies that since the anthology was directed at the primarily white high school and college education market, any works containing words generally considered profane or obscene had to be either edited or omitted. Alexander considers this evidence of how Hughes, a paragon of scholarship in his field, accommodated the marketplace at the expense of a diminished representation of African American culture by allowing the tastes of the teacher who would be purchasing and students who would be reading New Negros Poets: USA to censor his selections.
1. Based on the passage, Alexander believes one of the Hughes motivation behind the publication of New Negros Poets: USA was to A. Identify literature that would be viewed as foundational works of African American poetry.
B. Generate revenue from book sales to high school and colleges,
C. Encourage and develop the skills of aspiring poets.
D. Criticize and improve the works of established contemporary poets.
E. Accommodate the market place even if doing so meant excluding important poets
2. The author suggests that Alexander and Hughes would disagree thatA. Anthologies are an effective vehicle for expanding reader’s awareness of the literature of cultures different from their own
B. Editing the literature of one culture does not make that literature more acceptable to a different culture.
C. Editorial changes to a literal work by editor of an anthology should be reviewed by the works author prior to publication in the anthology.
D. The literature of a marginalized culture should be edited if doing so makes that literature more accessible to the dominant culture.
E. Marketplace conditions should never affect the decisions of literary editors.
3. The information in the passage suggest that which of the following hypothetical editorial decision in compiling a literary anthology most clearly exemplifies the aspect of Hughes’s editing decision that alexander criticized?A. In a collection of regional literature, as many different types of literature from that region are included as possible.
B. In a collection of national folk songs, the anthem of a separatist region that refers to the national government as illegitimate is not included in the interest of a national unity.
C. In a collection of poems originally written in a different language, only poems that retain their original meaning when translated into the target language included.
D. In a collection of works published at the end of an annual writer’s workshop, participants who feel their work is not yet finished may choose to submit their manuscript for publication in a later edition.
E. The poetry club of a university publishes a collection of student work of every year and includes a few poems written by professor and staff as well.