Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900-2000

Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900-2000 seeks to make up for the usual omissions, the oversights or the deliberate exclusions, in any number of US cultural histories. In an inspired series of entries -- writing to photography, politics to science, film to dance, and with a due emphasis on the contributions to the national narrative of women, migrants, dissidents and artists of every stripe -- it supplies a necessary reference volume. Appropriate recognition is given to each and all of the voices that make up the US's multicultural tradition, whether white-ethnic, African American, Native Asian American or Latino/a, which are set within an informative and unfolding timeline of both US and world events. The entries, drawn from recognized expertise, come over succinctly and to the point, helped not a little by the user-friendly overall layout. A. Robert Lee, The Year's Work in English Studies, Vol. 84, Oxford University Press (2005)

CARLA BLANK, REDISCOVERING AMERICA: THE MAKING OF MULTICULTURAL AMERICA, 1900-2000 (THREE RIVERS PRESS) Carla Blank's "Rediscovering America" is a fascinating look at one of the most complex, destructive, creative centuries of human history: the twentieth. Blank cautions us that her book "is not intended to make a case for presenting the twentieth century as the American century." Blank's book is by no means a dry, historical textbook; nor is it in the usual sense of the phrase a "time line," though the book is arranged chronologically and we are able to follow several historical themes as we move through it. Rather, it is a book of stories, and they are often very interesting, moving stories. Have you heard of Dr. Charles Drew? In an entry for 1941, Blank writes, "Dr. Charles Drew (1904-1950), an African American hematologist, surgeon, scientist, and educator, develops a long- term preservation technique for blood plasma. This innovation becomes especially crucial to saving lives when it is adopted by the U.S. and Britain on World War II battlefields after Dr. Drew founds the first system of blood banks administered under the American Red Cross. He will die after an auto accident, when the nearest ?white' hospital refuses to give him blood to save his." That Dr. Drew spent his life saving lives makes the circumstance of his death all the more moving and tragic: who was there to save his? The cover of "Rediscovering America" presents the book as "written and edited by Carla Blank, The Before Columbus Foundation." The comma is important. Blank was the primary author of the book, but the book contains many contributions from others. "Rediscovering America" is divided into decades; at the beginning of each decade, a member of the Before Columbus Foundation has contributed an introductory essay--sometimes a personal essay, such as that by Juan Felipe Herrera, sometimes an historical essay. The exceptions to this are 1910- 1919's "American Acculturation and the Alaska Native Brotherhood" by historian Stephen W. Haycox, which was written by Haycox at the request of a member of the Before Columbus Foundation, Andrew Hope, and the lyrical "Poem for the 1980s" by Joyce Carol Thomas. There are also smaller articles written by various hands. Ishmael Reed's introduction to the sixties is also exceptionally interesting. Reed discusses Malcolm X, whom he knew. All told, the book contains contributions from some forty people in addition to Blank. The inclusion of other voices is a small but telling example of the "multiculturalism" of Blank's title. It also gives the book a variety of tones and attitudes--always a good thing in an historical account. Blank discusses the United States' "permanent war economy" as well as the "legal disenfranchisement of African Americans," "resegregation" (along with "desegregation"), Ghandi's "passive resistance" (satya-graha, "firmness in truth"), "liberation theology" (a term from Vatican II), "environmenta