It was announced by Ronald Takaki’s family that famous Asian American historian committed suicide after a twenty year struggle with multiple sclerosis. You can read the obituary from the LA Times here.
Ron Takaki was a hero of mine when I first started taking Asian American studies in 1993, having read his famous textbook Strangers from a Different Shore, one of the first widely distributed textbooks on Asian American history. I also used the text myself when I taught my own course in Asian American history at San Francisco State in 2000/2001. I also met him a few years ago at Eastwind Books in Berkeley when he was promoting his book Double Victory about the triumph of multiculturalism after World War II, and his humility and passion for learning about the oft-neglected histories of people of color inspired me.
Ron Takaki blazed a trail for many Asian Americanists and other people interested in American ethnic studies, teaching the first black history course in UCLA in the late 1960s. After he was dismissed by UCLA in the early 1970s, he moved to UC Berkeley where he wrote many books on Asian Americans, history and ethnic studies. He also helped establish the first graduate and doctoral program in American ethnic studies in the United States at Cal, where many personal friends graduated and are now teaching all over the United States.
Unfortunately, a number of other pioneers in Asian American studies and culture have also passed away this past month, including Al Robles, a beloved San Francisco-based Filipino American poet best known for his book, Rappin’ with 10,000 Carabaos in the Dark; Richard Aoki, a Japanese American charter member of the Black Panthers in the 1960s; and Him Mark Lai, an engineer turned historian who was instrumental in writing the first pieces on Chinese American history in the United States. While these people were not as well known on a national or international level as Takaki, all of them contributed immensely to the beginning and development of Asian American studies as a legitimate field of study who left us with an amazing legacy of activism in academia.
(via Angry Asian Man and Hyphen Magazine)
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4 Comments to “RIP Ronald Takaki (1939-2009)”
jozjozjoz wrote:
“Strangers From a Different Shore” was one of the books I was assigned to read in my first Asian American Studies class at UCLA. It was so influential that I decided to add Asian American Studies as one of my undergrad majors. Every so often, I fancy thoughts of going back to school to do graduate work in AAS. Takaki has influenced so many people, and I’m proud to count myself as one of them.
Efi, thanks for the coverage on Al Robles, Richard Aoki, and Him Mark Lai. They’ve each contributed so much to the fields of ethnic studies and their impact will not be forgotten.
Posted on 29-May-09 at 11:51 am | Permalink
Teresa wrote:
I didn’t know about any of these Asian Americans. This is great. Going to do some research on each one of them myself now.
Posted on 30-May-09 at 2:25 pm | Permalink
Efren wrote:
Yeah, Takaki was one of the first to write a comprehensive history of Asian Americans and inspired many of my friends who are now academics to go into Asian American studies because of his scholarship. It was the first time that I had seen someone take all these different threads of different Asian American groups and tied them into a comprehensive story of how we’ve all gained a foothold in the United States even when the laws and the odds were clearly stacked against us, and the mainstream were hell bent on wiping us from the United States by preventing our ancestors from creating families, preventing the straight men in bachelor societies from marrying the non-Asian women that they loved, preventing migration of Asian women because they were believed to be prostitutes, etc.
The other folks were instrumental in legitimizing the historical experience of Asian Americans pre-1965, some directly involved in creating Asian American studies programs in the Bay Area, and some documenting the stories and histories of the Chinese and Filipino Americans in a scholarly way, through poetry and through academic quality papers. We really owe them a debt of gratitude for what they’ve done for us, and ensuring that the stories of those who came before us, especially before 1965, aren’t forgotten.
Posted on 30-May-09 at 5:42 pm | Permalink
jen wrote:
sadness.
i’ll never forget his high energy, enthusiasm for discovering history from a different lens, and his pure joy for teaching.
i kept crashing to get into (and eventually enrolled) his ethnic studies upper division course as a sophomore @ berkeley. thank you for writing the homage. i’m so thankful i was persistent and had the chance to take his course–it really changed my life.
Posted on 31-May-09 at 9:29 am | Permalink
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