We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History - Softcover

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9781560255055: We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560255056 ISBN 13: 9781560255055

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2003

We Are the People collects the personal accounts, letters, speeches and other documents that, together, tell the untold story of American history—two centuries of struggle from the perspective of the people. Featuring first-person accounts by numerous forgotten Americans who provide alternative perspectives on critical moments in our history, this book transports us to many of our country's most moving and least celebrated moments, from heart-wrenching slave narratives to pivotal labor speeches, from piercing manifestos by women's-rights proponents to American Indians' accounts of the shame of their culture's destruction. We Are the People also explores issues such as poverty, corporate power, immigration, and civil liberties. It includes selections ranging from a Quaker's account of life as a conscientious objector during the Civil War to an interview with a woman who helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott; from a native American's description of a cavalry charge on a Cheyenne encampment to exploited coal miners' tales of woe; from a contemporary mother's account of stealing groceries to feed her children to manifestoes by today's anti-corporate guerillas. A gripping, accessible read, We Are the People reveals an American experience that is pushed aside, forgotten or ignored all too often by our mainstream mythology.

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From Publishers Weekly:

As Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) writes in his introduction, textbooks rarely "allow the past to speak," nor do they allow "regular folks" to have their say. This volume is an attempt to fill both those gaps by collecting together 50 letters, essays, and personal accounts that give attention to the long-suppressed voices of Native Americans, slaves, women and the poor. For example, Nez Perce Chief Joseph's 1878 article explains how he tried to avoid battling with General Oliver O. Howard and asks that his people not be forced onto a reservation. "I see men of my race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals," he writes. "We ask to be recognized as men." And in an excerpt from his autobiography, escaped slave William W. Brown describes the brutal forced submission of a proud and strong slave who refused to be whipped. More contemporary entries by John Steinbeck, Studs Turkel and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickle and Dimed) reveal that the fight for civil and economic liberty is far from over. Though the biographical information about each author is rather scanty, this anthology makes an excellent, and useful, complement to any traditional history text.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Is history really written by the winners? In an era of unprecedented access to print media and the Internet, that oft-repeated cliche would seem to have less validity. No one can seriously argue, for example, that Native American perspectives on the history of the West are unavailable, even in so-called mainstream texts. So there is an underlying quality of unwarranted smugness in this compilation of viewpoints that have supposedly been excluded from historical accounts. Still, there is much of interest and value here as well. In an address to President Monroe, a Pawnee chief eloquently ruminates on the future of his people. William Brown, an escaped slave and abolitionist, describes in horrifying detail the brutal subjugation of a proud, defiant slave. An excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 best-seller, Nickel and Dimed, illustrates the drudgery and hardships of those who labor at the margins of our economy. This work would be particularly useful as supplementary reading for both high-school and undergraduate survey courses in U.S. history. Jay Freeman
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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