Different Mirror : A History of Multicultural America

by Takaki, Ronald

• ISBN13: 9780316831116
• ISBN10: 0316831115
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-01
• Publisher: BACK BAY BOOKS

Summary

A dramatic retelling of our nation's past by today's preeminent multiculturalism scholar, Ronald Takaki, this book examines America's history in "a different mirror"-from the perspective of the minority peoples themselves. Beginning with the colonization of the "New World" and ending with the Los Angeles riots of 1992, this book recounts the history of America in the voices 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. In this significant work of scholarship, Professor Takaki grapples with the raw truth of American history and examines the ultimate question of what it means to be an American.

Author Biography

Ronald Takaki is a professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of six books, including Strangers from a Different Shore. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Author's Note	v
1 A Different Mirror	1	(20)
PART ONE: BOUNDLESSNESS	21	(58)
Before Columbus: Vinland	21	(3)
2 The "Tempest" in the Wilderness: The Racialization of Savagery	24	(27)
Shakespeare's Dream about America	25	(19)
A World Turned Upside Down	44	(7)
3 The "Giddy Multitude": The Hidden Origins of Slavery	51	(28)
A View from the Cabins: White and Black Laborers in Early Virginia	52	(9)
"English and Negroes in Armes"	61	(7)
The Wolf by the Ears	68	(11)
PART TWO: BORDERS	79	(146)
Prospero Unbound: The Market Revolution	79	(5)
4 Toward the Stony Mountains: From Removal to Reservation	84	(22)
Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age	84	(4)
The Land-Allotment Strategy: The Choctaw Experience	88	(5)
The Treaty Strategy: The Cherokees' Trail of Tears	93	(5)
Where the Buffalo No Longer Roam	98	(8)
5 No More Peck o'Corn: Slavery and Its Discontents	106	(33)
Racial Borders in the Free States	107	(3)
Was Sambo Real?	110	(12)
Slave Son, White Father	122	(4)
Black Nationalism: Nostalgia in the Niger	126	(5)
"Tell Linkum Dat We Wants Land"	131	(8)
6 Emigrants from Erin: Ethnicity and Class within White America	139	(27)
The Irish Exodus	139	(7)
An "Immortal Irish Brigade" of Workers	146	(8)
The Irish Maid in America	154	(6)
The Irish "Ethnic" Strategy	160	(6)
7 Foreigners in Their Native Land: Manifest Destiny in the Southwest	166	(25)
"In the Hands of an Enterprising People"	166	(11)
"Occupied" Mexico	177	(7)
The Making of a Mexican Proletariat	184	(7)
8 Searching for Gold Mountain: Strangers from a Pacific Shore	191	(34)
Pioneers from Asia	192	(12)
Chinese Calibans: The Borders of Exclusion	204	(5)
Twice a Minority: Chinese Women in America	209	(6)
A Colony of "Bachelors"	215	(10)
PART THREE: DISTANCES	225	(148)
The End of the Frontier	225	(3)
9 The "Indian Question": From Reservation to Reorganization	228	(18)
Wounded Knee: The Significance of the Frontier in Indian History	228	(3)
The Father of the Reservation System	231	(3)
Allotment and Assimilation	234	(4)
The Indian New Deal: The Remaking of Native America	238	(8)
10 Pacific Crossings: Seeking the Land of Money Trees	246	(31)
Picture Brides in America	247	(4)
Tears in the Canefields	251	(15)
Transforming the Land: From Deserts to Farms	266	(11)
11 Between "Two Endless Days": The Continuous Journey to the Promised Land	277	(34)
Exodus from the Pale	277	(6)
A Shtetl in America	283	(5)
In the Sweatshops: An Army of Garment Workers	288	(5)
Daughters of the Colony	293	(5)
Up from Greenhorns: Crossing Delancey Street	298	(13)
12 El Norte: The Borderland of Chicano America	311	(29)
The Crossing	312	(5)
A Reserve Army of Chicano Labor	317	(9)
The Internal Borders of Exclusion	326	(8)
The Barrio: Community in the Colony	334	(6)
13 To the Promised Land: Blacks in the Urban North	340	(33)
The Black Exodus	341	(6)
The Urban Crucible	347	(8)
Yearning for Blackness in Urban America	355	(11)
"But a Few Pegs to Fall": The Great Depression	366	(7)
PART FOUR: CROSSINGS	373	(56)
The Ashes at Dachau	373	(5)
14 Through a Glass Darkly: Toward the Twenty-first Century	378	(51)
A War for Democracy: Fighting as One People	378	(21)
America's Dilemma	399	(30)
A Note of Appreciation	429	(1)
Notes	430	(65)
Index	495	(13)
About the Author	508