Strangers at the Gates Again: Asian American Immigration After 1965 (The Asian American Experience) [Library Binding]

Ronald Takaki (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995 | Age Level: 11 and up | Series: The Asian American Experience

In the crucible of World War II, America had to fight not only the armies of fascism but its racist ideology as well. The nation was forced to reexamine its exclusionist immigration policies and its denial of citizenship to thousands of Asian immigrants who had fought alongside white Americans to save democracy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movment further accelerated demands for change. Asian Americans gradually earned the right to become citizens, to own land, and to participate more fully in American life. Finally in 1965, Congress passed a new immigration act that vastly increased the quotas for immigrants from Asian countries, and a huge second wave of these immigrants began to arrive in the United States, boradening the ethnic mix of American cities and towns with people from Japan, China, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. After 1975, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos began to arrive. All the old problems remained--racism, barriers to equal employment, and cultural conflicts between the immigrant generation and their American-born children--but it was clear that the face of America had become infinitely more diverse and its definition more democratic.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6 Up?The past 30 years of Asian immigration to America are covered in this adaptation of Takaki's adult title, Strangers from a Different Shore (Viking, 1990). In clear and precise language, the author describes the experiences of immigrants from many Asian countries, as well as how they differed from those of people who were "first wave" immigrants. There is sometimes a sameness to the struggles depicted (for example, professional men and women from Korea and from the Philippines left their native lands because they could not find jobs in their fields; however, in the U.S. many worked at jobs far below their levels of capability and education). This repetition (although accurate), some broadly generalized statements in the introduction, the less than compelling black-and-white photographs, and the sense that the book was once part of a more complete historical record keep it from being an absorbing account. On the other hand, it will be in demand for reports, and will serve well for that purpose.?Carla Kozak, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Library Binding
• Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791021904
• ISBN-13: 978-0791021903
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,905,915 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.