PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewThis collection of 29 of his essays lends us the fullest portrait yet between two covers of Kennedy’s thought, and just as much of it fits the mold of Black thought traditionally treated as \'authentic\' as does not ... The reason for this cocktail of positions is that Kennedy, as a legal scholar and law professor to the nth degree, is uncompromisingly disinclined to partisanship over reflection. His discipline in this regard is rather awesome ... Kennedy is someone who studiously resists feeling over thinking, and in considerable part for that reason Say It Loud! is not a book most will be inclined to take on vacation ... While Say It Loud! may not always be exciting reading, Kennedy is the kind of writer who gives you the sense that in the end he’s always just plain right ... He assumes progress will be gradual and, one senses, relatively undramatic. And in this, as in almost everything about his views on race in America, Kennedy is both resolutely temperate and probably right.
Katherine D. Kinzler
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewKinzler admirably steers clear of stressing tenets such as \'People speak differently with intimates than in formal settings,\' which hardly seem like hot news to most of us. What makes sociolinguistics a subject worth engaging with are the surprises, and Kinzler’s book is full of them. She reveals the extent to which language imprints our brains and how we are neurologically programmed to be sensitive to it ... This is vital counsel ... How You Say It makes a crisp but comprehensive case, while dropping us in on what sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic research teaches, that although our distaste for ways of speaking that differ from ours is baked into us, true civilization requires that we work against it as much as possible.
