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