"As I grew up, I did not know why families representing such an array of nationalities from different shores were living together and sharing their cultures and a common language. My teachers and textbooks did not explain the diversity of our community or the sources of our unity." Chap. 1, p. 3

"Similarly manager George F. Renton advised his fellow planters to employ as many different nationalities as possible on each plantation in order to 'offset' the power of any one nationality of workers." Chap. 2, p. 26

"And so they entered a new and alien world where they would become a racial minority, seen as different and inferior, and where they would become 'strangers'." Chap.r 2, p. 75

"As the first Asian group to enter America, the Chinese merit our close attention. What happened to them in the nineteenth century represented the beginning of a pattern for the ways Asians would be...