A Larger Memory: A History of our Diversity, With Voices - Softcover

Takaki, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316311626 ISBN 13: 9780316311625

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 1998

Synopsis

A sweeping yet intimate history of the diverse individuals who, together, make up America. Ronald Takaki uses letters, diaries & oral histories to share their stories. Workers, immigrants, shopkeepers, women, children & others, their lives often separated by ethnic borders, speak side by side as Takaki frames their voices with his own text.

About this title

About the Author:

My grandfather emigrated from Japan to work on the cane fields of Hawaii in 1886, and my mother was born on the Hawi Plantation. As a teenager growing up on Oahu, I was not academically inclined but was actually a surfer. During my senior year, I took a religion course taught by Dr. Shunji Nishi, a Japanese American with a Ph.D. I remember going home and asking my mother, who only had an eighth-grade education: "Mom, what's a Ph.D.?" She answered: "I don't know but he must be very smart." Dr. Nishi became a role model for me, and he arranged for me to attend the College of Wooster. There my fellow white students asked me questions like: "How long have you been in this county? Where did you learn to speak English?" They did not see me as a fellow American. I did not look white or European in ancestry. As a scholar, I have been seeking to write a more inclusive and hence more accurate history of Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans as well as certain European immigrant groups like the Irish and Jews. My scholarship seeks not to separate our diverse groups but to show how our experiences were different but they were not disparate. Multicultural history, as I write and present it, leads not to what Schlesinger calls the "disuniting of America" but rather to the re-uniting of America.

From Publishers Weekly:

Through this collection of essays, oral histories and primary source material, Takaki challenges what he describes as "the master narrative of American history, the ethnocentric story told from the perspective of the English colonists and their descendants" by illuminating the contributions that America's numerous ethnic groups have made to the nation's history. One of the country's premier multiculturalist scholars, Takaki (A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America) eschews the angry, jargon-ridden ideological polemics that make up the usual artillery of the curriculum wars, opting instead to let America's diverse peoples speak for themselves in excerpts that are both informative and moving. While a few pieces are by familiar figures such as Frederick Douglass and Black Elk, most are by "ordinary" people?African, Latino, Native American, Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Japanese, Polish, Mexican, Italian, Caribbean, Indian, Puerto Rican, Korean?who recount their struggles and aspirations eloquently and with dignity. Takaki introduces themes throughout, such as how immigrant groups fought to keep America true to its own promises of justice and equality. For example, an Irish American who became a radical labor activist recalls a teacher who "drilled us so thoroughly in... the Bill of Rights, that I have been defending it ever since." Rather than balkanize America, scholarship of this caliber serves to bring Americans together in a greater appreciation of the diverse origins of our common heritage. Editor, Jennifer Josephy; agent, Rick Balkin.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0316311626
• ISBN 13: 9780316311625
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384