This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." As Dr. G enters her eighth decade, 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.

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 a scholar-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).

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