Who is Ronald Takaki from Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans and what is their importance? Strangers_from_a_Different_Shore:_A_History_of_Asian_Americans English & Literature Ronald Takaki | Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

Ronald Takaki is the author of the book. He grew up in Palolo Valley in Oahu, Hawaii in an area populated by Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese and other nationalities. There were people of many different ethnic cultures speaking many different languages. Most spoke pidgin English. As a child, he did not understand the ethnic diversity of his community and his schooling did not explain it. He attended college at the College of Wooster in Ohio and received a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Even through he was a third generation American, he was still treated is a foreign student in college. He feels that this is true of all Asian Americans because they are not white. In his look at Asian Americans in America, he takes somewhat of a Marxist approach, using terms like "class conflict" and "industrial reserve army." In Strangers From a Different Shore, Takaki looks at how Asian immigration to Hawaii and the Untied States began.