A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

by Ronald Takaki

Overview

Ronald Takaki's beloved classic is a "brilliant revisionist history of America" (Publishers Weekly) that dramatically retells our nation's story from the perspective of minorities.
  Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounted the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States—Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and others—groups who helped create this country's rich mosaic culture.

Now, Ronald Takaki has revised his landmark work and made it even more relevant and important. Among the new additions to the book are:

• The role of black soldiers in preserving the Union
• The history of Chinese Americans from 1900-1941
• An investigation into the hot-button issue of "illegal" immigrants from Mexico
• A look at the sudden visibility of Muslim refugees from Afghanistan.

This new edition of A Different Mirror is a remarkable achievement that grapples with the raw truth of American history and examines the ultimate question of what it means to be an American.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316022361
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/08/2008
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	529
Sales rank:	83,400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Ronald Takaki (1939-2009) established the Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for thirty years. He was the author of six books, including Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans and Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II.

Table of Contents

1 A Different Mirror: The Making of Multicultural America 3

Part 1 Foundations

Before Columbus: Vinland 23

2 The "Tempest" in the Wilderness: A Tale of Two Frontiers 26

Shakespeare's Dream About America 27

English Over Irish 28

English Over Indian 30

Virginia: To "Root Out" Indians as a People 34

New England: The "Utter Extirpation" of Indians 37

Stolen Lands: A World Turned "Upside Down" 44

3 The Hidden Origins of Slavery 49

A View from the Cabins: Black and White Together 51

"English and Negroes in Armes": Bacon's Rebellion 57

"White Over Black" 62

Part 2 Contradictions

The Rise of the Cotton Kingdom 75

4 Toward "the Stony Mountains": From Removal to Reservation 79

Andrew Jackson: "To...Tread on the Graves of Extinct Nations" 79

The Embittered Human Heart: The Choctaws 83

"The Trail of Tears": The Cherokees 87

"American Progress": "Civilization" Over "Savagery" 91

5 "No More Peck o' Corn": Slavery and Its Discontents 98

"North of Slavery" 99

Was "Sambo" Real? 102

Frederick Douglass: Son of His Master 113

Martin Delany: Father of Black Nationalism 118

"Tell Linkum Dat We Wants Land" 122

6 Fleeing "the Tyrant's Heel": "Exiles" from Ireland 131

Behind the Emigration: "John Bull Must Have the Beef" 132

An "Immortal Irish Brigade" of Workers 137

Irish "Maids" and "Factory Girls" 145

"Green Power": The Irish "Ethnic" Strategy 151

7 "Foreigners in Their Native Land": The War Against Mexico 155

"We Must Be Conquerors or We Are Robbers" 155

Anglo Over Mexican 164

8 Searching for Gold Mountain: Strangers from a Different Shore 177

Pioneersfrom Asia 178

Twice a Minority: Chinese Women in America 191

A Colony of "Bachelors" 195

A Sudden Change in Fortune: The San Francisco Earthquake 200

"Caught in Between": Chinese Born in America 203

Part 3 Transitions

The End of the Frontier: The Emergence of an American Empire 209

9 The "Indian Question": From Reservation to Reorganization 214

The Massacre at Wounded Knee 214

Where the Buffalo No Longer Roam 216

Allotment and Assimilation 220

The Indian "New Deal": What Kind of a "Deal" Was It? 225

10 Pacific Crossings: From Japan to the Land of "Money Trees" 232

Picture Brides in America 233

Tears in the Canefields 237

Transforming California: From Deserts to Farms 252

The Nisei: Americans by Birth 259

11 The Exodus from Russia: Pushed by Pogroms 262

A Shtetl in America 267

In the Sweatshops: An Army of Garment Workers 271

Daughters of the Colony 275

Up from "Greenhorns": Crossing Delancey Street 280

12 El Norte: Up from Mexico 292

Sprinkling the Fields with the Sweat of Their Brows 295

Tortillas and Rotis: Mixed Marriages 300

On the Other Side of the Tracks 302

The Barrio: A Mexican-American World 307

13 To "the Land of Hope": Blacks in the Urban North 311

"The Wind Said North" 312

The Crucible of the City 318

Black Pride in Harlem 325

"But a Few Pegs to Fall": The Great Depression 332

Part 4 Transformations

The Problem of the Color Lines 339

14 World War II: American Dilemmas 341

Japanese Americans: "A Tremendous Hole" in the Constitution 342

African Americans: "Bomb the Color Line" 350

Chinese Americans: To "Silence the Distorted Japanese Propaganda" 359

Mexican Americans: Up from the Barrio 361

Native Americans: "Why Fight the White Man's War?" 367

Jewish Americans: A "Deafening Silence" 371

A Holocaust Called Hiroshima 380

15 Out of the War: Clamors for Change 383

Rising Winds for Social Justice 383

Raisins in the Sun: Dreams Deferred 396

Asian Americans: A "Model Minority" for Blacks? 402

16 Again, the "Tempest-Tost" 405

From a "Teeming Shore": Russia, Ireland, and China 406

Dragon's Teeth of Fire: Vietnam 411

Wars of Terror: Afghanistan 418

Beckoned North: Mexico 426

17 "We Will All Be Minorities" 434

Author's Note: Epistemology and Epiphany 441

Notes 447

Index 519

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"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." —-Kirkus

Editorial Reviews

"A splendid achievement, a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history. The research is meticulous, the writing powerful and eloquent, with what can only be called an epic sweep across time and cultures." —Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"Takaki's book is nothing less than an attempt to view all of American history from a multicultural perspective. It is a laudable effort — humane, well-informed, accessible, and often inclusive. It is clearly not intended to divide Americans but rather to teach them to value the nation's inescapable diversity." —New York Times Book Review

"One closes the book with a deepened sense of the centrality of ethnicity in the American past." —Washington Post

"An excellent place to start in understanding how this uniquely diverse country came to be and where it is headed."—Christian Science Monitory

"A groundbreaker...It's fascinating to watch Takaki weave these multifaceted strands into a single narrative text." —San Francisco Chronicle

"While Takaki's subtitle is 'a history of multicultural America,' his book is also a manifesto for the future."—New York Review of Books

"A Different Mirror advances a truly humane sense of American possibility." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

From the Publisher

Takaki’s overview of the role of minorities in America’s history—native, immigrant, racial, national, ethnic, and religious—clearly takes their side and sympathizes with their often appalling treatment but saves overt polemic for the conclusion. Peter Berkrot’s narration, fittingly, adopts a tone of mostly understated sympathy. Quotations often suggest an accent or dialect—Hispanic, Southern, Irish, for example—a tactic that adds warmth and color but manages to skirt stereotyping by its subtlety. Berkrot’s voice is a bit astringent but serviceable; his reading well paced, eloquent, and clear; his tone and expression are well matched to the text. Barring a few high-profile mispronunciations (“epi-stemology”), he gives a professional but personable reading of a history more Americans should know. W.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

MAY 2011 - AudioFile