A Different Mirror

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-3

Reading Check

1. Takaki begins Chapter 1 by describing a personal experience involving a racist encounter. Who is the other person in this encounter?

2. In the year 1000, Vikings sailed from Iceland to a new land they called Vinland. What is Vinland known as today?

3. In what year was The Tempest first performed in London, a time when English audiences were becoming increasingly exposed to different societies?

4. Takaki traces the English people’s notion of racialized identity—the concepts of “savage” and “civilized”—to the invasion of what country?

5. In Chapter 2, Takaki uses an allegory from The Tempest to further tease out the racially charged concepts of “savage” and “civilized.” In this allegory, Prospero best embodies the traits of which society?

6. What about Caliban’s mother serves as evidence, as Takaki argues, that Caliban is Black?

7. In what year did Africans land in Virginia, not as slaves but as indentured servants?

8. Takaki analyzes the writings of which American historical figure to demonstrate that slavery, in colonial America, was never a coherent project?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Takaki, whose grandfather immigrated from Japan in the 1880s, is frequently asked how long he’s lived in the United States—even though he has lived in America his entire life. Why is this question offensive? What does it betray about the asker’s thinking?

2. In no less than 2 sentences, briefly describe what is meant by Takaki’s concept of the “Master Narrative of American History.”

Paired Resource

The Tempest, Act I, Scene II, Caliban

• “The Other Solos” is a video series of Shakespeare monologues that deal with “issues of identity, migration, power, and exile.” Each of these monologues is performed by actors whose native language is not English.
• This performance connects to theme of The Tempest and Representation of “the Other.”
• Does Hervé Goffings’s performance of this pivotal monologue teach you anything new about the character of Caliban? Examine it particularly in the context of Takaki’s allegory of “civilized” and “savage,” which draws from The Tempest.

Chapters 4-8

Reading Check

1. As Takaki points out in Part 2, the “highly complex industrial economy” relied on what labor source to fuel the market demand for cheap, accessible goods?

2. Andrew Jackson devoted his military and political career to appropriating land from Native Americans. To where, according to Takaki, did Jackson primarily relocate them?

3. As described in Chapter 4, what innovation in transportation aided in the rapid expansion of the Western frontier, as well as the continuous displacement of Native Americans?

4. What period of time does Takaki cover in Chapter 5, in describing the political, economic, and social conditions of oppressed African Americans?

5. In what year did Ireland’s potato famine occur, resulting in the loss of roughly 40% of potato crops, as described in Chapter 6?

6. In the early 1900s, Irish immigrants in the United States primarily worked in municipal, construction, and industrial jobs. What force was imposed upon these sectors, specifically, to further help protect the Irish’s growing political base? 

7. What year marks the beginning of the mass migration of many Chinese individuals to the United States, according to Takaki in Chapter 8?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. As detailed by Takaki in Chapter 4, the US government’s agenda on Indigenous populations had devastating consequences for them. Generally describe these devastating consequences—what would happen to Indigenous populations that were displaced? In your answer, be sure to cite specific populations referenced in this chapter’s case studies. After the American Revolution, slavery was made illegal in the North—yet Black individuals still experienced racism, discrimination, and political disenfranchisement. What is an example of prejudice African Americans faced post-American Revolution, as described by Takaki in Chapter 5?

2. In Chapter 7, what does “the Texas game” refer to? Explain the context that makes “the Texas game” an important historical moment.

Paired Resource

“Census Shows Sharply Growing Numbers of Hispanic, Asian, and Multiracial Americans”

• In this article from 2021, The New York Times reports that “overall population growth slowed substantially over the past decade, but the number of multiracial Americans more than doubled.” (Subscription may be needed to view.)
• This content connects to the theme of Multiculturalism and Diversity in America.
• Considering the roadblocks that many American immigrant communities have faced in their assimilation, what does it mean that the United States grew significantly more diverse over the past decade? What do you think Takaki would have to say about this?

Chapters 9-13

Reading Check

1. What Indigenous group was massacred at Wounded Knee in 1890?

2. What was the name of the Act that “authorized federal funding for tribes to purchase lands, reversing policy dating back not only to 1887 but to 1607”? (Chapter 9)

3. In what year was the Hawaii Laborers’ Association formed?

4. By 1890, approximately 60% of Jews worked in which rapidly expanding industry in New York City?

5. Which famous college enacted a quota that limited the number of Jews able to enroll in the early 1900s, as Takaki mentions in Chapter 11?

6. Which ethnic group referred to America as “the Promised Land”?    

7. What is the term for the Mexican American ethnic enclave described in Chapter 12?

8. After the Civil War, African Americans were most commonly employed as tenant farmers for white landowners. What was this system called?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What did the Hawaii Laborers’ Association advocate for its members to receive? Why was the formation of this association important to the labor movement?

Paired Resource

“America’s Modern Sharecropping: The Student Loan Debacle”

• In this scholarly article from The Journal of Politics and Strategy (Autumn 2021), Emily Dubois and Ethan Rhabb make the case that the current student loan system is comparable to past oppressive systems such as sharecropping.
• Do you agree or disagree with the authors’ assertion? In what ways was the past’s version of sharecropping worse than the student loans? In what ways was it potentially better?

Chapters 14-17

Reading Check

1. Part 4 begins with the following quote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” What groundbreaking book is this quotation drawn from?

2. By order of President Roosevelt in 1942, how many Japanese Americans were interned on the West Coast?

3. What group did the US military recruit as “code talkers” to pass on messages that war enemies could not decipher?

4. Which US president made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

5. Name one of the several US Supreme Court cases that struck down institutionalized racism as unconstitutional, as discussed by Takaki in Chapter 15.

6. Chapter 16 begins with Takaki discussing two refugee groups who, in the late 20th century, migrated to the US to flee violence and persecution in their home countries. What are the two refugee groups?

7. Irish immigrants banded together with what other immigrant group to advocate for immigration reform in the 1980s and 1990s?

8. According to the 2006 Census, what percentage of California's Mexican population are US citizens?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Chapter 14 explains how various immigrant communities made significant contributions to the US war efforts during World War II. Name two immigrant communities and describe their contributions.

2. In Chapter 17, Takaki says that Americans must create a more inclusive history that “bridges the divide” and presents “a different mirror” of a shared past. What does he mean by this? What does the “different mirror” refer to?

Recommended Next Reads 

Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki

• Four years before A Different Mirror was published, Takaki wrote Strangers from a Different Shore, a work of non-fiction that examines 150 years of Asian American history, relying mostly on primary sources (recollections and interviews) interspersed with historical facts.
• Like A Different Mirror, Strangers from a Different Shores deals with themes of “Othering” and Multiculturalism in America.
• Strangers from a Different Shore on SuperSummary

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

• A People’s History of the United States retells the entirety of American history through the Marxist theory of “historical materialism,” thus turning the standard conception of American ideals and values on its head.
• Zinn’s book is controversial and considered to be one of the most groundbreaking works of Revisionist History.
• A People’s History of the United States on SuperSummary