The Skin That We Speak Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom [Paperback]

Now in paperback,The Skin That We Speaktakes the discussion of language in the classroom beyond the highly charged war of idioms and presents today’s teachers with a thoughtful exploration of the varieties of English that we speak, in whatBlack Issues Book Reviewcalls “an essential text.”

Edited by bestselling author Lisa Delpit and education professor Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, the book includes an extended new piece by Delpit herself, as well as groundbreaking work by Herbert Kohl, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Victoria Purcell-Gates, as well as classic texts by Geneva Smitherman and Asa Hilliard.

At a time when children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when the class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate,The Skin That We Speakoffers a cutting-edge look at crucial educational issues.

Although these lucid, accessible pieces speak most directly to teachers and would be teachers . . . the issues are broad enough to attract more general readers, especially parents.
—Publishers Weekly

Lisa Delpit, a MacArthur Fellow, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” She is the author ofOther People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom(The New Press) and is currently the executive director for the Center for Urban Education and Innovation at Florida International University.Joanne Kilgour Dowdyis Associate Professor of Adolescent/Adult Literacy at Kent State University in the Department of Teaching, Leadership, and Curriculum Studies. She is the author ofGED Stories: Black Women and Their Struggle for Social Equity.

Introduction
LISA DELPIT

In a study conducted in 1974 to assess the devel³*