A Larger Memory: A History of our Diversity, With Voices

A Larger Memory emerges from eighteenth-century archives and yesterday's headlines -- a sweeping yet intimate history of the diverse individuals who, together, make up America. Ronald Takaki uses letters, diaries, and oral histories to share their stories. Workers, immigrants, shopkeepers, women, children, and others, their lives often separated by ethnic borders, "speak" side by side as Takaki frames their voices with his own text. Among them, the young slave Frederick Douglass learns to read; a fifteen-year-old Irish-American girl speaks at a labor rally; a Native American performs as an "Indian" in a Wild West show; a Japanese American fights heroically in World War II; an illegal Mexican immigrant renounces her artistic dreams to provide a future for her son; affirmative action helps a black youth obtain a university education and escape from the inner city. Takaki skillfully weaves these voices and others to create a dynamic conversation about the diverse nature of the American experience.