Sista, Speak!: Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and LiteracyThe 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, and self image of five African