<DIV>Now in paperback, <I>The Skin That We Speak</I> takes the discussion of language in the classroom beyond the highly charged war of idioms and presents today’s teachers with a thoughtful exploration of the varieties of English that we speak, in what <I>Black Issues Book Review</I> calls ?an essential text.”<BR><BR>Edited by bestselling author Lisa Delpit and education professor Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, the book includes an extended new piece by Delpit herself, as well as groundbreaking work by Herbert Kohl, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Victoria Purcell-Gates, as well as classic texts by Geneva Smitherman and Asa Hilliard.<BR><BR>At a time when children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when the class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate, <I>The Skin That We Speak</I> offers a cutting-edge look at crucial educational issues.</DIV>