A Different Mirror

Perhaps the most prominent theme in Takaki’s book is his focus on America as a multicultural and diverse country and the contributions that minority groups have made to it. In every chapter it is clear that the America we know today was built from the hard work, ingenuity, and dreams of Native Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, Japanese Americans, and countless other ethnic immigrant groups. Takaki details the economic magnitude and cultural significance of their contributions, showing that the “Master Narrative of American History,” which primarily focuses on the achievements of white Americans, is wrong.

Takaki begins his book by explaining his approach is comparative and inclusive. Thus, while he devotes most chapters to a single ethnic group, he also creates a comparative perspective across chapters, showing how these groups are similar to and different from one another and, above all, interconnected. For instance, when Takaki discusses the economic contributions of minority groups in the 19th century, he links these contributions to a deeper history of class exploitation and racial and ethnic oppression:

Working in the textile mills of New England, Irish immigrant women manufactured fabric made from cotton grown on former Indian lands and picked by enslaved African Americans; meanwhile, Irish immigrant men labored in New England shoe factories, making shoes from hides shipped by Mexican workers in California. Chinese and Irish railroad workers laid the transcontinental tracks that closed the frontier (78).

Takaki makes it clear in this passage, and countless others, that the American economy—from the agricultural fields to the textile mills, factories, and railroad tracks—was built through the appropriated land and labor of people from all parts of the world.

In addition to economic contributions, Takaki also focuses on the cultural contributions of ethnic minorities. Takaki’s narrative style, which pays close attention to routine, everyday activities, captures the richness of multicultural America. In the following passage he describes the lunches of immigrant workers and their children during the 1920s, highlighting the communality of many different ethnic groups working and living next to each other, forging a multicultural identity that also included a shared language, Hawaiian Pidgin English:

‘Everybody took their own lunches’ to school, Lucy Robello of the Waialua plantation said. ‘And like the Japanese used to take their little riceballs with an ume [pickled plum] inside and little daikon [radish]. And us Portuguese, we used to take bread with butter and jelly or bread with cheese inside.’ Then, at noon, Japanese and Portuguese children would trade their kaukaus [lunches] with each other. Meanwhile, in the fields, their parents were also sharing their lunches. ‘We get in a group,’ William Rego recalled. ‘We pick from this guy’s lunch and that guy’ll pick from my lunch and so forth.’ Crossing ethnic lines, workers would taste each other’s foods and exclaim in Hawaiian: ‘Ono, ono!’ ‘Tasty, tasty!’ (248).

The large presence of second-generation immigrant children in the 20th century also reflects America’s multicultural composition. Takaki frequently refers to their experiences, highlighting the sense of “twoness” they felt living in America, first as the children of immigrants with distinct traditions and expectations, and second as acculturated Americans (260). A young Afghan American expresses this cultural duality with the following statement:

‘There are a lot of kids my age,’ the twenty-four-year old Murtaza said, ‘who don’t understand or appreciate what their parents went through. We are half American. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing. It’s who we are. But Afghanistan is also embedded in me—it is who I am, at least a part of me’ (424).

The unique position of second-generation immigrant children also has parallels with the children of mixed racial and ethnic unions. While miscegenation between whites and blacks was outlawed until 1967, these types of relationships certainly occurred, dating back to Europeans’ earliest settlements in America. Takaki also documents how ethnic immigrants maneuvered around miscegenation laws, forming marital unions with other ethnic groups, as seen between Sikh men and Mexican women, creating families that celebrated their multiculturalism. Through these kinds of examples and case studies, Takaki illustrates the deep history of America’s multicultural diversity—a social tapestry that speaks to his own life experiences as a Japanese American, growing up in a multiethnic household, marrying a white woman, and being a grandfather to children of Jewish and Mexican descent.