Asian Pacific American Heritage
I confess to a personal agenda. I have a son-- half-Jewish, half-Chinese, all American-- and I don't want him, or anyone else's sons or daughters, growing up studying a curriculum that marginalizes or trivializes them. This work, then, has been a labor of love.
There is nothing new or radical about multiculturalism. It is the logical continuation of the Western humanist project. The finest art works, the poet Shelley claimed, have a power no polemic has: they make us human to each other. "The great secret of morals is love," Shelley argued. By enlisting our imagination, art can put us "In the place of another, and many others," so that the "pains and pleasures" of all humankind become "our own" (A Defence of Poetry, 1821). This volume will, I hope, help ethnic art works "leap the gap" to the wider audience and accomplish that noble goal-- long a central goal for the best spirits in Western culture.