Read more
Zusatztext “[ A Different Mirror is] 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 “This 375-page book would be an excellent way to include multi-ethnic materials in the classroom as a way to ensure that your students see their unique identities reflected in their coursework.” — Skipping Stones “ A Different Mirror advances a truly humane sense of American possibility.” —Henry Louis Gates! Jr. "The 'mirror' that Ronald Takaki holds up to the United States reflects a multicultural history of oppression and exploitation! but also struggle! solidarity! and community. In the most profound sense! this is a people's history of our country. Takaki shows what has torn us apart! yet what knits us together. This young people's version of A Different Mirror will introduce a new generation to Takaki's pathbreaking scholarship." —Bill Bigelow! curriculum editor! Rethinking Schools! and co-director! Zinn Education Project Informationen zum Autor Ronald Takaki, Adapted by Rebecca Stefoff Klappentext A longtime professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, Ronald Takaki was recognized as one of the foremost scholars of American ethnic history and diversity. When the first edition of A Different Mirror was published in 1993, Publishers Weekly called it "a brilliant revisionist history of America that is likely to become a classic of multicultural studies" and named it one of the ten best books of the year. Now Rebecca Stefoff, who adapted Howard Zinn's best-selling A People's History of the United States for younger readers, turns the updated 2008 edition of Takaki's multicultural masterwork into A Different Mirror for Young People . Drawing on Takaki's vast array of primary sources, and staying true to his own words whenever possible, A Different Mirror for Young People brings ethnic history alive through the words of people, including teenagers, who recorded their experiences in letters, diaries, and poems. Like Zinn's A People's History , Takaki's A Different Mirror offers a rich and rewarding "people's view" perspective on the American story. Introduction My Story, Our Story I was going to be a surfer, not a scholar. I was born and grew up in Hawaii, the son of a Japanese immigrant father and a Japanese-American mother who had been born on a sugarcane plantation. We lived in a working-class neighborhood where my playmates were Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, and Hawaiian. We did not use the word multicultural, but that’s what we were: a community of people from many cultural, national, and racial backgrounds. My father died when I was five, and my mother remarried a Chinese cook. She had gone to school only through the eighth grade, and my stepfather had very little education, but they were determined to give me a chance to go to college. My passion as a teenager, though, was surfing. My nickname was “Ten Toes Takaki,” and when I sat on my board and gazed at rainbows over the mountains and the spectacular sunsets over the Pacific, I wanted to be a surfer forever. Then, during my senior year in high school, a teacher inspired me to think about the problems of the world and of being human and to ask, “How do you know what you know?” In other words, how do you know if something is true? The same teacher inspired me to attend college outside Hawaii, which is how I found myself at the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1957. College was a culture shock for me. The student body was not very diverse, and my fellow students asked me, “How long have you been in this country? Where did yo...
