My Soul Look Back in Wonder Memories from a Life of Study, Struggle, and Doin Battle in the Language Wars

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.

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

Dr. Geneva Napoleon Smitherman is University Distinguished Professor Emerita at Michigan State University, USA. A former high school English and Latin teacher in Detroit and ascholar-activist in Black Studies, she has been at the forefront of the struggle for language rights since the 1960s. She is author of six books, including Black Language and Culture (1975), Talkin and Testifyin (1977), Talkin That Talk (2000), and Routledge Linguistics Classic Word from the Mother (2021). She is co-author or editor of ten books, including Articulate While Black (with Dr. H. Samy Alim, 2012).