A review by pidgevorg
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki

3.0

Has an interesting premise, but doesn't quite have the depth I expected. It mostly consisted of a series of formulaic tales of woe—here is how group X came to America, and how decent and hard-working they were, and how the Anglos mistreated them, and here is how group Y came here, and also worked hard and was decent, and was also mistreated, etc. I guess there might still be people out there who have prejudices about minorities and aren't aware that this country has a history of racism and ethnic discrimination... So this was important info and I'm glad it was in the book, but it's not enough. I hoped it would present major trends in US history from the point of view of minorities, and highlight their contributions and influences on mainstream history and culture, but this was done only occasionally and inconsistently. Takaki provides a lot of selective details, but not enough analysis. I'm not sure if that's because of the author's choices, or because there is simply not enough primary sources available to do this—he does get better the closer he gets to modern times. So it may not be his fault, but either way, I was underwhelmed with the final result.