Retrieve A Different Mirror: A History Of Multicultural America Picturized By Ronald Takaki Document
book is about point of views from different people who came to America thinking about having a better life, but came here only be put at work, discriminated and hated.
But later generations saw what their ancestors went through and put more effort into education and business because they saw the good jobs came from education, People tried to fit into the American Society but they were not so easily accepted, From the two chapters that were read which were "Searching For Gold Mountain and Pacific Crossings" they showed how Asians were treated and what the Asians thought of the land from their point of view, which was not what they thought it would be.
But when your reading the book, you could see each race's point of view, In the beginning, there was only one version of American history the one that began with the "discovery" of North America by Europeans, particularly the English, who created a beachhead of "civilization" on the East coast and then conquered a series of "frontiers" moving westward until they "won" and became God's gift to humanity, creating a country which is like a city built on a hill shedding light and progress everywhere else on earth.
That is the history I was taught in the's and early's as I was growing up and coming of age, Sometime in the late's a competing version appeared socalled ethnic histories, the stories of this or that "unmeltable" population African Americans, Native Americans, women, Asian Americans, well, you get the picture, That was the "new" version of American history that was emerging in the late's and into the's when I was in graduate school and just beginning my career as a teacher.
The task was to recover the histories that had been lost or hidden and write them down as quickly as possible before they disappeared again, For the future's sake, I had to piece together the two histories for my students, forcing them to read between the lines of a "standard US history" or so the administration called it! and various books telling the story of individual "nonstandard" groups again, the fretting language of administrators at the time!
The problem is that American history is so incredibly more complicated than that and is found in the interplay of all the people who have come to occupy the same space, literally and figuratively, with one another and between one another.
I think we are finally starting to come to grips with the fact that it isn't just the story of WASPM America that is to be trusted, and I believe we are beginning, as well, to understand that it is as much the story of the interplay of all the histories of ALL the individual groups who have landed here by choice, force, or chance including those who wandered here in antiquity.
than any single strain of that history, The themes are HUGE and heroes become villains and villains become heroes depending on which lens one is looking through, It's hard to get one's mind around the actual Story between all the stories, to come to grips with what it means to call ourselves a "multicultural nation" as if somehow THAT will solve all our dilemmas.
The real story is so messy, so complex, and, well, so very human,
Ronald Takaki's book is a starting attempt at creating a popular history as opposed to an academic one which allows the stories of our separate identities to play together.
First published inand brought "up to date" in a second edition in, "A Different Mirror" follows the history of multiple specific groups as they arrive and seek to get a foothold in creating their own identity as Americans.
It is a story about the continuing tension between our ideal "all men and women are created equal" and our steadfast commitment to "the bottom line, " Unapologetic democracy and unchecked capitalism are strange and strained bedfellows, and whole groups of human beings have been consumed in the living out of the thing, I appreciate the effort the book can serve as a solid, accessible introduction to the complexity for anyone willing to go there, It isn't by any means THE definitive history but it is a good start and I think a good starting place for walking toward a history that is truer to the truth about us than that which we have seen before.
This book does not only depict the history of multicultural America but also predicts the future of multicultural America in a very pleasant and smooth way, The very beginning A Different Mirror: the making of multicultural America is the best part of the whole book, I just Love it. It gives general view and outline of how America has become multicultural, It is simple and straight to the point, Sometimes, you forget that you are reading a textbook full of Info, rather you think yourself reading a literary book, a novel,
And then the book goes smoothly from one historical phase to another, It goes from Foundations to Contradictions to Transitions to Transformations and then to how America will be in the future, Under every Main chapter, there are miner chapters, This book is wonderfully composed,
One thing I really do not like about the book and I consider it the only flaw in
the book, is the organization of the pictures, The pictures in the book are not well organized, They scattered in ten papers in secession, Every picture should be in the miner chapter it belongs to, Every picture describes an event,
After Reading this book you will know how British colonists, African, Irish, Jew, Chinese, Japanese, and Afghans first came to America,
Warning: Before reading this book, try to read The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Reading or watching the play The Tempest is a necessity because the author relates to it very often, It will do you good if you read MobyDick by Herman Melville,too,
I regret one Thing only, This book deserve more time than the time I have given it, If I were you I would have one month to read it, However, It is a book that I will read over and over again, It is a book that will be kept and saved for life in my humble small book shelf, This is an essential book for anyone who actually wants to understand the history of the United States, It's exactly what a history book should be: Takaki shows where the information comes from and shows you things you didn't know about race, economics and policy going back to the founding of the American state.
I tend to be skeptical of books covering broad stretches of history, and this was then compounded by the number of groups Takaki sought to represent e, g. , Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, etc, . That said, this collection was well executed and is definitely worth a read,
Due to Takaki's objective of reexamining deep American history through the lens of disenfranchised groups, everyone and their mother will probably draw comparisons to Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States.
" While that is valid, Takaki's approach is very much rooted in how ethnic minority groups both shaped and were impacted by prominent events such as the colonial period, the Civil War, World War II, and the/attacks.
Here Takaki examines meanings of the social constructs that create the very concept of 'race,' as well as what it ultimately means to be 'American, ' Identity is very much the name of the game,
Furthermore, by shinning a light each chapter on a specific ethnic group, he is able to address the stereotypes associated with them in set time periods, Every group mentioned overcame some manner of adversity, and were dehumanized or otherized in specific ways, Takaki lays out the context for each situation, subverts the narrative of passive victimhood, and zeroes in on the perseverance and agency of each group,
My only criticism would be that there were points of history that should have been mentioned or elaborated on, Specifically, cities are the major focal point postCivil War, and I would have liked to have read more about rural history in the Jim Crow era, Also, while major discriminatory legislation is highlighted e, g.Chinese Exclusion Act, Plessy v Ferguson, Immigration Act of, etc, I would have also been interested in reading more on the civil rights efforts prior to the Civil Rights Act ofand the Immigration and Naturalization Act of, as well as their direct aftereffects.
Still, what is presented is ambitious in scope, and its largest strength is the due to the emotional earnestness of the delivery, The accounts of ethnic minority groups in the U, S. are not bside stories, but American history itself, Ronald Takaki has a personal stake in making this point clear, being the member of a multiethnic family himself, This emotional core at the center of a wellresearched body of work is what makes "A Different Mirror" worth reading, .