Strangers from a Different Shore

Ronald Takaki (1939-2009) was an American historian from Oahu, Hawaii. After studying history at the College of Wooster in Ohio, Takaki completed his Masters and PhD degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. Takaki showed an early interest in the history of ethnic minorities in America, as his PhD thesis analyzed the arguments used to justify slavery. After graduating with his PhD in 1967 he began teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and later returned to the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, where he taught until 2003. Takaki taught courses on Black American history, Asian American history, and racial inequality in America, among other topics. Takaki was renowned on campus for the popularity of his lectures, as students enthusiastically signed up for his courses in large numbers. Another of Takaki’s main accomplishments was the development of Ethnic Studies as a discipline at Berkeley, making it the first program of its kind at a US university.

During his decades-long career as a professor, Takaki began writing and editing books on American history, helping to pioneer new histories of the US that focused on ethnic minorities. These included A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (1973), Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America (1979), Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii (1983), and A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993), among others. According to the director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, Takaki “elevated and popularized the study of America’s multiracial past and present like no other scholar” (“A Different Mirror.” Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards). Takaki was awarded the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color Author Award by that organization for his contribution to multicultural scholarship over the course of his career.

In Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, Takaki channels his decades of experience as a historian into presenting a detailed account of Asians in America, from the first waves of immigration in the early 19th century to the second wave of the late 20th century. Combining big picture demographics with individual experiences, Strangers from a Different Shore explores broad trends in Asian immigration while also recognizing the multiplicity of individual experiences within those trends.

As an American of Japanese descent, Takaki has personal insight into the Asian American experience, and in this work he sometimes references his own family history to illustrate his points. For instance, when discussing how the younger generation of Asian Americans rejected menial plantation labor, he refers to his own father as an example. Toshio Takaki decided that “the plantation could not hold him down” (173, and he moved to Honolulu to study photography and open his own studio. Since his father died when he was only five, Takaki reflects on his father’s immigration journey with his own unanswered questions: “I wondered how young Toshio managed to come to the United States. Why did he go to Hawaii? Did he go alone? What dreams burned within the young boy?” (489). Indeed, in his book Takaki reveals that his parents and grandparents’ experiences as plantation workers provoked his curiosity and prompted him to write another history book on Hawaiian plantations. Takaki’s personal investment in his work, and his extensive professional expertise on his subject matter, make his book a fascinating source on this chapter of American history.