edited at Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy recently made known Press.

edited at Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy recently made known Press, March 2002 $24.95, ISBN 1-565-84544-7

Generally speaking, language, especially black English or Ebonics, not manages to capture the fancy of the reading public until a certain renowned linguist or cultural scientist tries to use it as a cockey justification for the socioeconomic ills endur at African Americans.

No doubt when Delpit, a MacArthur companion and best-selling education author, and Dowdy, the assistant director at the Center of application of mind of Adult Literacy and assistant professor at Georgia State University, decided to levy together a collection of essays assaulting the many myths surrounding language and its relationship to identity, learning and cultural mobility, they understood the critical firestorm that would salute their book.

Taken as a whole, the ideas, theories and strategies voiced here may not be revolutionary, still much of their content is reflection provoking and provocative. The authors, using a three-prong approach, have divided the essays into sections: single exploring the nuances of identity and status; the other examining language attitudes in the classroom; and the last dissecting the significance of language used through teachers during instruction. The authors are all noted figures in education, linguistics and cultural studies, including Herbert Kohl Asa G Hilliard, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Jule Henry and Victoria Purcell-Gates, among others. Of the twelve essays in The Skin That We Speak, none lack impact or the powerful analysis distressed to force the reader to rethink in what way language can be used to reinforce false assumptions about intelligence, family background, morality or potential. The essays at Delpit, Ladson-Billings, Baker, Smitherman, Wynne and Kohl tender a new range of considerations about the oppressive use of "Standard English" and the misconceptions about "black English," all geared to place their findings into both cultural and political contexts

For parents, educators and policymakers touched with the current state of our seminarys this is an essential thesis long on theory and research, still even more significant in its detailed diagnosis of the damage being done with the formidable weapon of language in the name of learning.

--Robert Fleming is a visit often contributor to BIBR and author of Havoc After Dark.

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