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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
RONALD TAKAKI (1939-2009) was recognized as one of the foremost scholars of American ethnic history. Born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii, the descendent of Japanese immigrant field workers, Takaki became the first member of his family to receive higher education, attending The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, and later receiving a doctorate in history from the University of California, Berkeley. Takaki has said that he was "born intellectually and politically" during this period in Berkeley in the 1960s. His PhD dissertation was on the subject of slavery in America, and he went on to teach the first black history course at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the Watts riots. Returning to Berkeley, Takaki helped found the nation's first ethnic studies department and rose to national prominence publishing works on the history of immigration and the understanding of ethnicity in the Americas. His 1989 title Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Takaki died in 2009.
REBECCA STEFOFF specializes in writing nonfiction for young readers, with a focus on scientific, historical, and literary subjects. She previously explored the subject of evolution in Charles Darwin and the Evolution Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1996) and the four-volume series Humans: An Evolutionary History (Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2010). Stefoff has also written on exploration, forensic investigation, and archaeology, among other topics. In addition to writing her own books, Stefoff has adapted several important nonfiction works for young audiences: A Young People's History of the United States , based on Howard Zinn's bestselling classic of progressive history ; Before Columbus: The Americas in 1491 , based on Charles C. Mann's ground-breaking new look at the archaeology of the pre-Columbian Americas; and A Different Mirror for Young People , based on a major work of scholarship by ethnic historian Ronald Takaki.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-This established adult classic of multiculturalism has been pared down for a younger audience. Stefoff, who previously adapted Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (Longman, 1980), takes a crack at Takaki's look at America and its people. Focusing on a variety of groups-Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, Irish, Mexicans, Afghans, Vietnamese, and more-this volume tells America's story through the millions of people who came here seeking the Land of Opportunity only to find low wages, pitiable living conditions, and bigotry at every turn. Yet Takaki keeps bitterness at bay, writing with hope and conviction about the many opportunities for young Americans to make change in a country where, soon enough, "we all will be minorities." Stefoff adds a few nice touches-the short stories of individuals ending each chapter definitely make the content more relatable-but many young people would be better off sticking with Takaki's original text.-Sam Bloom, Blue Ash Library, Cincinnati, OH (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
This is an abridged version of an adult book on the historical background of different ethnic and racial groups, including African-, Native-, Jewish-, and Mexican Americans. A chapter on World War II features the internment of Japanese Americans. The last few chapters highlight newer immigrant groups. Black-and-white archival photos and images support the choppy text. Student researchers should find the original version preferable. Glos., ind. (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A classic framing of this country's history from a multicultural perspective, clumsily cut and recast into more simplified language for young readers. Veering away from the standard "Master Narrative" to tell "the story of a nation peopled by the world," the violence- and injustice-laden account focuses on minorities, from African- Americans ("the central minority throughout our country's history"), Mexicans and Native Americans to Japanese, Vietnamese, Sikh, Russian Jewish and Muslim immigrants. Stefoff reduces Takaki's scholarly but fluid narrative (1993, revised 2008) to choppy sentences and sound-bite quotes. She also adds debatable generalizations, such as a sweeping claim that Native Americans "lived outside of white society's borders," and an incorrect one that the Emancipation Proclamation "freed the slaves." Readers may take a stronger interest in their own cultural heritage from this broad picture of the United States as, historically, a tapestry of ethnic identities that are "separate but also shared"--but being more readable and, by page count at least, only about a third longer, the original version won't be out of reach of much of the intended audience, despite its denser prose. In either iteration, a provocative counter to conventional, blinkered views of our national story. (endnotes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 12-15)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In 1993, Takaki wrote his seminal work, A Different Mirror. In the second edition (2008), he revised some chapters and added others that focus on newer immigrants, legal and illegal, presenting views from the perspectives of both minority and immigrant groups and white, Eurocentric populations. As he stated in the final chapter, White Americans will not be a majority for much longer America will truly be a nation of minorities. Here Stefoff takes Takaki's book and adapts it for middle-grade and younger high-school readers, reducing the original by about 150 pages and revising some vocabulary to make it more accessible for the intended audience. She has retained quotations from the original and maintained the carefully cited chapter notes. Sidebars toward the end of each chapter highlight a particular person or event discussed. This book, whether Takaki's original or Stefoff's adaptation, is important reading, and few other titles look at American immigration in such a thorough way.--Petty, J. B. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
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 you learn to speak English?" To them, I did not look like an American or have an American-sounding name. When I fell in love with one of those students, Carol Rankin, she told me that her parents would never approve of our relationship, because of my race. Carol was right. Her parents were furious. Still, we decided to do what was right for us. When we got married, her parents reluctantly attended. Four years later, when our first child was born, her parents came to visit us in California. After I said, "Let me help you with the luggage, Mr. Rankin," Carol's father replied, "You can call me Dad." His racist attitudes, it turned out, were not frozen. He had changed. By that time I was working on my Ph.D. degree in American history. I became a college professor at the University of California in Los Angeles and taught the school's first course in African American history. In 1971, I moved to the University of California at Berkeley to teach in a new Department of Ethnic Studies. In the decades that followed, I developed courses and degree programs in comparative ethnic studies, and I wrote several books about America's multicultural history. My extended family, too, became a multicultural, mixed-race group that now includes people of Japanese, Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Taiwanese, Jewish, and Mexican heritage. I have come to see that my story reflects the story of multicultural America--a story of disappointments and dreams, struggles and triumphs, and identities that are separate but also shared. We must remember the histories of every group, for together they tell the story of a nation peopled by the world. As the time approaches when all Americans will be minorities, we face a challenge: not just to understand the world, but to make it better. A Different Mirror studies the past for the sake of the future. Excerpted from A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
