A Different Mirror

[Lloyd]

I heard an interview of the author last week and decided to read his book. It was interesting to me that Bill Clinton invited him to the White House to give input for a speech he was about to give at a California University on multiculturalism. He was the first professor to teach Black History at UCLA(1966) and his doctoral thesis was on slavery in South Carolina and specifically on the effort to reinstate the slave trade in 1850. His paper so impressed his professor that he encouraged him to submit it to the state of South Carolina, which he did and they accepted it and published it as part of their state history. I have just begun to read this book, but so far, so good.

[Donna]

Lloyd wrote: "I heard an interview of the author last week and decided to read his book. It was interesting to me that Bill Clinton invited him to the White House to give input for a speech he was about to give ..."
This is an interesting take on it. I read it when it was assigned to me during the last year of my undergraduate studies. Maybe I focused on the portion dealing with Asian Americans because of the class I was taking; maybe it was because the author is of Japanese ancestry; or maybe it was because I had recently married a Japanese citizen. At any rate, I had all but forgotten Takaki's section on slavery, which is strange, since I would later teach about the American Civil War for about a decade of my years in the classroom.

I liked Takaki also; I either sold or gave away most of my undergrad texts, but this one is still planted in my home library in the American history section. However, if you want to read more about the slavery issue, I strongly recommend (if you haven't already read it)James McPherson's The Negro's Civil War. For the period just prior to 1850, I think WEB DuBois's biography of John Brown is unbeatable!