This pioneering study of African American students in the composition classroom lays the groundwork for reversing the cycle of underachievement that plagues linguistically diverse students. "African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom "approaches the issue of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in terms of teacher knowledge and prevailing attitudes, and it attempts to change current pedagogical approaches with a highly readable combination of traditional academic discourse and personal narratives.

Realizing that composition is a particular...

This pioneering study of African American students in the composition classroom lays the groundwork for reversing the cycle of underachievement that plagues linguistically diverse students. "African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom "approaches the issue of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in terms of teacher knowledge and prevailing attitudes, and it attempts to change current pedagogical approaches with a highly readable combination of traditional academic discourse and personal narratives.

Realizing that composition is a particular...

"Tornado is a book of ravishing and precise beauty. Death, said Wallace Stevens, is the mother of beauty, and so it is here; around the loss of a beloved sister in childhood, Ted Lardner has spun a radiant web of language by which he reveals what does not and cannot die, in the scale of nature above and underground, in the movements of time, and in the ongoing reach of human tenderness that 'glides through our skins like a wave, lighting it up from inside.'"--Alicia Ostriker

"Ted Lardner enlarges our range of wonder. For him, the task is to bring the jolt...