Melissa

“Most white people in Midland City were insecure
when they spoke, so they kept their sentences short and their words
simple, in order to keep embarrassing mistakes to a minimum.
Dwayne certainly did that. Patty certainly did that.
This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their
ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to
speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they
were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if
they couldn’t love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems
and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe.
The black people would not put up with this. They went on talking
English every which way. They refused to read books they couldn’t
understand—on the grounds they couldn’t understand them. They
would ask such impudent questions as, “Whuffo I want to read no Tale
of Two Cities? Whuffo?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions