Ronald Takaki
The book commences with an anecdote by Takaki, the author, in which he is picked up by a cab in Norfolk. After some polite conversation, the taxi driver asks him how long he’s been in the country because his English is excellent, automatically having assumed his Asian passenger is a visitor to the country. In fact, Takaki was born in American. It is from this point of reference with which Asian-Americans as a whole routinely deal that the narrative develops which explores multiculturalism in the United States.
Langston Hughes
A towering figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes takes center stage as a foundation of the book’s central premise that all cultures should be celebrated America since there is no such thing as a singularly American culture. Hughes is also situated as central to the ideological rejection of American capitalist materialism as part and parcel of the establishment of African American aesthetics.
Thomas Jefferson
The Founding Father credited with asserting that America was to be a place where all men are equal is portrayed as a sinister menace to any culture not influenced by white European aristocracy. His “enlightened” vision of the indigenous tribesman waiting her for Europeans to “discover” a new world is framed as being of the opinion that civilizing them meant taking away the land upon which they hunted for survival in order to turn them into farmers, a profession Jefferson placed at a status just slightly below god.
Martin Delany
While noted abolitionist and herald African American leader Frederick Douglass is a major character in the narrative as expected, this might be many readers’ first introduction to another figure of almost equal significance who remains mostly hidden in the shadows of white American history. Delany was the foremost figure representing black nationalism in the 19th century, promoting the idea of establishing a separate country for freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. His nationalistic fury was partially ignited as a result of being among three black men who were accepted for enrollment into Harvard Medical School only to almost immediately face expulsion as a result of racist opposition.
