Other People's Children - by Lisa Delpit (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A thirtieth anniversary edition of the landmark work on race, power, and education--repackaged for a new generation

Since its original publication, education professor Lisa Delpit's Other People's Children has become a foundational text in the struggle for equity in education. Drawing on her experience as a teacher, researcher, and Black woman navigating predominantly white institutions, the MacArthur Award-winning educator offers a searing critique of how power and race operate in the classroom--and how well-intentioned educators often fail the students they most want to help.

Delpit's central insight--that academic struggles among children of color often result from cultural miscommunication, not lack of ability--has transformed the thinking of teachers, administrators, and teacher educators nationwide. With over 300,000 copies sold and awards including the American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice and Choice magazine's Outstanding Academic Book, this classic continues to shape educational conversations across the country.

This thirtieth anniversary edition features a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . And the Rest of Y'all Too Christopher Emdin, as well as a new preface by Lisa Delpit reflecting on education reform during the decades since Other People's Children first exploded on the scene.

Review Quotes

Praise for Other People's Children:

"Phenomenal. . . . [This book] overcomes fear and speaks of truths, truths that otherwise have no voice."
--San Francisco Review of Books

"Here, finally, is multiculturalism with a human face."
--Teacher Magazine

"Provides an important, yet typically avoided, discussion of how power imbalances in the larger U.S. society reverberate in classrooms."
--Harvard Educational Review

About the Author

MacArthur Award winner Lisa Delpit is the Felton G. Clark Professor of Education at Southern University. The author of the bestselling Other People's Children and "Multiplication Is for White People," co-editor (with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy) of The Skin That We Speak, editor of Teaching When the World Is on Fire, and co-author (with Christopher Emdin) of The Sacred Art of Teaching (all published by The New Press), she lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.