c)
Like the Phoenix, which rises from the ashes, they will rebuild their society from the destruction caused by the bombing and the damage caused by outlawing books.
I’d say:
I had a hard time deciding whether to write an essay about the works of “Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks” because the rest of the punctuations doesn’t make sense.
But actually it should be:
I had a hard time deciding whether to write an essay about the works of Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
(Without the quotation marks and inclusion the word “and” before “Gwendolyn”)