The 2021 novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw confirmed that Stephen Graham Jones is one of the most talented writers of horror fiction today. By featuring main characters who are Blackfeet, like Jones himself, the novel also helped to ensure that Indigenous people have a place within the horror genre. But Jones is hardly the only Indigenous voice in horror: Lisa Fuller, a member of the Murri people of Australia, has also written in the genre. Her acclaimed 2019 young adult novel Ghost Bird is set in a Murri community in Queensland, Australia.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence?
Explanation
Context: A passage credits Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart Is a Chainsaw, then turns to Lisa Fuller as another Indigenous horror writer. The underlined sentence says that by featuring Blackfeet main characters, the novel helped ensure Indigenous people have a place in the horror genre. The task is its function.
Answer: C) It highlights the significance of the portrayal of Indigenous people in My Heart Is a Chainsaw.
Why? The sentence ties one specific feature of the novel, its Blackfeet main characters, to a larger effect: securing Indigenous presence within horror. Naming that effect is a statement about why the portrayal matters.
Traps:
- A) No forecast about other writers is made; the sentence reports what Jones's novel already did, and the later example, Lisa Fuller, is herself Indigenous.
- B) "Like Jones himself" notes a shared background rather than rebutting any view that the novel is autobiographical, and no such view is mentioned.
- D) The sentence asks nothing and never discusses readers, sales, or people who dislike horror.