Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (Penguin Reference Books)

Rating:
Summary: Educational AS WELL AS extreamly entertaining
Review: This book is by far the funniest book I've ever peered into. It gives comprehensive definitions, origins, time-periods, and in-context sentences of 99% of African American derived slang.

Educational. Entertaining.

It is explicit language but it is not at all gratuitous. 5 HUGE stars.

Rating:
Summary: Searched High and Low! Fantastic!
Review: This is one of the best books ever on African American language. And yes, it is a language. The French experiemntal writer Raymond Federman challenged me to write a piece that would be densely and mentally impregnable to anyone but African Americans as American and English Colonies can be to other races. It succeeded on many levels. One, it was a fantastic story and two, it got me to use this book as source for finding new words/terms and as a reference to checking what I already knew.
Thsi book is invaluable to the scholar of language. I spent the last 2 years patiently hunting for this book as it is out of publication. I actually bought it at twice the cover price because it is that good. There is no higher that I can recommend this book. As the tapestry of language is art, this would be one of Picasso's treasured brushes.

Rating:
Summary: Searched High and Low! Fantastic!
Review: This is one of the best books ever on African American language. And yes, it is a language. The French experiemntal writer Raymond Federman challenged me to write a piece that would be densely and mentally impregnable to anyone but African Americans as American and English Colonies can be to other races. It succeeded on many levels. One, it was a fantastic story and two, it got me to use this book as source for finding new words/terms and as a reference to checking what I already knew.
Thsi book is invaluable to the scholar of language. I spent the last 2 years patiently hunting for this book as it is out of publication. I actually bought it at twice the cover price because it is that good. There is no higher that I can recommend this book. As the tapestry of language is art, this would be one of Picasso's treasured brushes.