Ethnic Islands: The Emergence of Urban Chinese America (The Asian American Experience) [Library Binding]

Ronald Takaki (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 6-10-Takaki presents a picture of the Chinese American experience in the 20th century through letters and writings as well as oral histories, conversations, speeches, and songs. A brief introductory chapter describes the group's immigration and living patterns in the U.S. in the latter part of the 19th century. The author then discusses such topics as the growth of Chinatowns and the lives of children within them. A concluding chapter records immigration after 1965. The well-written, absorbing text, adapted from the author's adult work, Strangers from a Different Shore (Little, 1989), is set in a pleasing, open format with many vintage black-and-white photos, some of which are fuzzy but almost all are interesting. The emphasis on first-person accounts and lifestyles distinguishes this work from William Daley's The Chinese Americans (Chelsea, 1988).-Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Library Binding: 128 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791021807
• ISBN-13: 978-0791021804
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,328,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My grandfather emigrated from Japan to work on the cane fields of Hawaii in 1886, and my mother was born on the Hawi Plantation. As a teenager growing up on Oahu, I was not academically inclined but was actually a surfer. During my senior year, I took a religion course taught by Dr. Shunji Nishi, a Japanese American with a Ph.D. I remember going home and asking my mother, who only had an eighth-grade education: "Mom, what's a Ph.D.?" She answered: "I don't know but he must be very smart." Dr. Nishi became a role model for me, and he arranged for me to attend the College of Wooster. There my fellow white students asked me questions like: "How long have you been in this county? Where did you learn to speak English?" They did not see me as a fellow American. I did not look white or European in ancestry. As a scholar, I have been seeking to write a more inclusive and hence more accurate history of Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans as well as certain European immigrant groups like the Irish and Jews. My scholarship seeks not to separate our diverse groups but to show how our experiences were different but they were not disparate. Multicultural history, as I write and present it, leads not to what Schlesinger calls the "disuniting of America" but rather to the re-uniting of America.