Full Description
This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." In a series of narrative essays, Dr. G writes eloquently and powerfully about the role of language in social transformation and the academic, intellectual, linguistic, and societal debates that shaped her groundbreaking work as a Black Studies O.G. and a Womanist scholar-activist of African American Language.
These eleven essays narrate the development of Dr. G's race, gender, class, and linguistic consciousness as a member of the Black Power Generation of the 1960s and 70s. In My Soul Look Back In Wonder, Dr. G links the personal to the professional and the political, situating the struggles, and successes, of a Black woman in the Academy within the historical experiences and development of her people.
As Dr. G enters her eighth decade, in this Black Lives Matter historical moment, she seeks to share the meaning and purpose of a life of study and struggle and its significance for all those who seek racial and social justice today.
Contents
List of Plates
Shout-outs
Chapter One Steppin Out on Faith
Chapter Two "When Do You Plan on Getting Married And Starting A Family?"
Chapter Three Quest for Knowledge and Liberation
Chapter Four Who We Be: The Language Wars In And Outside Of The Academy
Chapter Five Doin Battle In The Language Wars: Black Language And The Academy
Chapter Six Doin Battle In The Language Wars: Black Language And The Law
Chapter Seven Maintaining My Authentic Self
Chapter Eight The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Reparations and Affirmative Action
Chapter Nine African American Language and Literacy Program and Black Studies In The Twenty-First Century
Chapter Ten "What Is Africa To Me?": Longing And Looking For Home
Epilogue The Rhyming Tonal Semantics of History
Index
