Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring Outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955

What happens in a society so diverse that no ethnic group can call itself the majority? Exploring a question that has profound relevance for the nation as a whole, this study looks closely at eclectic neighborhoods in California where multiple minorities constituted the majority during formative years of the twentieth century. In a lively account, woven throughout with vivid voices and experiences drawn from interviews, ethnic newspapers, and memoirs, Allison Varzally examines everyday interactions among the Asian, Mexican, African, Native, and Jewish Americans, and others who lived side by side. What she finds is that in shared city spaces across California, these diverse groups mixed and mingled as students, lovers, worshippers, workers, and family members and, along the way, expanded and reconfigured ethnic and racial categories in new directions.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Varzally, Allison
Published: 03/01/2008
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520253452
Pages: 305
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.00w x 0.80d