Steppin out on faith -- "When do you plan on getting married and starting a family?" -- Quest for knowledge and liberation -- Who we be : the language wars in and outside of the academy -- Doin battle in the language wars : Black language and the academy -- Doin battle in the language wars : Black language and the law -- Maintaining my authentic self -- The good, the bad, the ugly : reparations and affirmative action -- African American language and literacy program and Black studies in the twenty-first century -- "What is Africa to me?" : longing and looking for home -- Epilogue. The rhyming tonal semantics of history.
Summary:
"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"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.