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Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond, ISBN 1-880192-18-7, was published by Caddo Gap Press in 1996. In the preface, James B. Boyer, a founder and former Executive Director of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) and professor of Curriculum and American Ethnic Studies at Kansas State University, writes, "Paul D. Christiansen and Michelle Young have taken a bold step in using strategies for their readers that embrace major categories of diversity and cultural understandings. As one reads this book, multiple perspectives unfold which, under normal circumstances, would not be part of the reader's world of understanding diverse cultures. As such, it is one of the few books which attempt to do this without a specific audience (corporate audience, academic audience) in mind. The volume, then, is one that could be consumed by the general public and makes a major contribution of our understanding of all peoples...
"...Their writings force us to examine the extent to which our own human qualities are nonviolently developed and/or exposed. America needs such reading at this time."
Covers the cultures by geographical/continental placement
Carries an abundance of personal interviews with--and essays by--people from a wide variety of cultures, including:
a former aide to the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who escaped from Iran in the late Seventies
Maria Segal, who, at the age of 6, was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto just two weeks before her family perished inside
Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who saved an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 Jews in Lithuania in 1940, directly against orders from Tokyo
The Buffalo Soldiers
An interview with Angela Bates, president of the Nicodemus Historical Society
Addresses the needs of the corporate community head-on.
Addresses the avenues for the development and appreciation of positive intercultural relationships.
Warmly written in conversational-style, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond is intended for both text and trade. Writes newspaper columnist Vicki Kabat, "These enlightening individual stories are the fabric squares that create a rich and beautiful quilt of American life. Good experiences and bad are reported with honesty. Perspectives gained from life experiences are shared in an effort to promote greater understanding.
"Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow gives several practical suggestions to achieve greater understanding and acceptance among peoples, all of them emphasizing education. Some examples include learning about different cultural and religious celebrations, researching family history and genealogy, and investigating differences between cultural groups within your family.
"Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow is an excellent primer in how to achieve what we profess to believe."
To see another review from the Multicultural Pavilion at the University of Virginia, click here.
"A wide range of interesting excerpts and stories of people from around the world. Excellent job of coherently presenting their stories and views, bridging them with insightful commentary. People in academic and non-academic settings should read this book as they struggle to understand the concept of multiculturalism."
March 1997: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond awarded #1 in General Nonfiction by the North Carolina Press Club
June 1997: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond awarded #2 in General Nonfiction from the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW). Judges included a former foreign correspondent and Pulitzer prize winner in international reporting, magazine editors and journalists.Full press release.
The book is available through several bookstores online, including Amazon.com as well as through Caddo Gap Press.
