Honorable Mention, Myers Outstanding Book Award, The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, 2003

The demand of white, affluent society that all Americans should speak, read, and write "proper" English causes many people who are not white and/or middle class to attempt to "talk in a way that feel peculiar to their] mind," as a character in Alice Walker's The Color Purple puts it. In this book, Sonja Lanehart explores how this valorization of "proper" English has affected the language, literacy, educational achievements,...