A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America - Hardcover

Takaki, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316831123 ISBN 13: 9780316831123

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1993

Synopsis

A multicultural scholar chronicles the history of America, from colonization to the 1992 L.A. riots, from the perspective of minorities. By the author of Strangers from a Different Shore. 35,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Takaki (1939&8211;2009) was the author of books including A Different Mirror, A Larger Memory, and Iron Cages, and is often cited as the father of multicultural studies in America.

From Kirkus Reviews

A valuable survey of the American experience of several racial and ethnic minorities: readable popular history in the mode of Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore (1989). Most multicultural histories focus on a single group and target a special-interest audience, but Takaki (Ethnic Studies/UC at Berkeley) opens the door wider by bringing together the viewpoints of Native Americas, Africans, Mexicans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and Jews, along with the changing attitudes of the ``civilized'' colonizing English and, later, WASP establishment. To the author, the ruling class incorrectly conceptualized America for centuries as a white country (``the lovely White,'' in Benjamin Franklin's words), only really confronting American racism after Hitler demonstrated where such ideology could lead. As in his Iron Cages (1979), Takaki avoids looking at groups in isolation: He stresses underlying cultural themes (the repeated debate among whites about whether racial ``inferiority'' is due to nature or nurture; the ruling class's strategy of appealing to race to thwart alliances of ``the giddy multitude'' of laborers and landless poor), as well as intergroup relations and mutual visions, both positive (a Mexican-Japanese labor alliance) and negative (the Irish--whose treatment by the English made them identify strongly with African-Americans--almost immediately adopted attitudes of racial superiority in the US). Along with standard historical sources, Takaki uses folk songs, poetry, and memoir to evoke the words and feelings of ordinary people. Condensing centuries of history into a chapter or two for each group unavoidably leads to oversimplification and occasionally familiar material; still, an excellent jumping-off place, with bibliographic notes pointing the way for further reading. (Photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0316831123
• ISBN 13: 9780316831123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 507