With the recent controversy in the Oakland, California school district about Ebonics—or as it is referred to in sociolinguistic circles, African American Vernacular English or Black English Vernacular—much attention has been paid to the patterns of speech prevalent among African Americans in the inner city. In January 1997, at the height of the Ebonics debate, author and prominent sociolinguist William Labov testified before a Senate subcommittee that for most inner city African American children, the relation of sound to spelling is different, and more complicated than for speakers of other dialects. He suggested that it was time to apply this knowledge to the teaching of reading. The testimony harkened back to research contained in his groundbreaking book Language in the Inner City, originally published in 1972. In it, Labov probed the question "Does 'Black English' exist?" and emerged with an answer that was well ahead of his time, and that remains essential to our contemporary understanding of the subject. Language in the Inner City firmly establishes African American Vernacular English not simply as slang but as a well-formed set of rules of pronunciation and grammar capable of conveying complex logic and reasoning. Studying not only the normal processes of communication in the inner city but such art forms as the ritual insult and ritualized narrative, Labov confirms the Black vernacular as a separate and independent dialect of English. His analysis goes on to clarify the nature and processes of linguistic change in the context of a changing society. Perhaps even more today than two decades ago, Labov's conclusions are mandatory reading for anyone concerned with education and social change, with African American culture, and with the future of race relations in this country.

Unsparing and important. . . . An informative, clearheaded and sobering book.—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post (1999 Critic's Choice) Inner-city black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence, but in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. This unwritten set of rules—based largely on an individual's ability to command respect—is a powerful and pervasive form of etiquette, governing the way in which people learn to negotiate public spaces. Elijah Anderson's incisive book delineates the code and examines it as a response to the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, to the stigma of race, to rampant drug use, to alienation and lack of hope.

Presents a collection of stories in which anything is possible, including people breeding dogs with humans to create a servant class, a city beneath a great city, and an employee finds that her hair has been stolen by someone intent on getting her job.

Explores the daily lives of a group of inner city residents, focusing particularly upon their language use and other types of literate strategies used to gain resources, access to social institutions, and respect.

Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as “deadbeat dads.” Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly—without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship’s demise. They offer keen insight into a radical redefinition of family life where the father-child bond is central and parental ties are peripheral. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Doing the Best I Can shows how mammoth economic and cultural changes have transformed the meaning of fatherhood among the urban poor. Intimate interviews with more than 100 fathers make real the significant obstacles faced by low-income men at every step in the familial process: from the difficulties of romantic relationships, to decision-making dilemmas at conception, to the often celebratory moment of birth, and finally to the hardships that accompany the early years of the child's life, and beyond.