21st Century American/access to the "American Dream"

For my final blog of the semester I'll revisit the questions I attempted to answer in my first couple blogs. First, what does it mean to be an American in the 21st century? After completing the coursework for this literature class, I am inclined to say that there is no one who defines the quintessential American today. Everyone comes from such unique and diverse backgrounds. Everyone's lives are made up of their own stories. So if no two people are exactly alike, how are we expected to find one thing that unifies us all into one stereotype? We simply cannot. Whether you think of Americans as looking for an escape from reality like Hunter S. Thompson, as an individual struggling with an identity crisis like John Smith, or as someone who has struggled and survived discrimination like Sethe or Kingston, Americans are just people who are looking for the right way to live their own lives. I also think Americans (like other societies) are constantly searching for personal and collective happiness, which brings me to the American Dream. People are searching for personal happiness within themselves, but a lot of people would claim that they are searching for happiness for all of society (peace on earth, etc. etc.) or at the very least happiness for their family. In searching for this happiness individuals are faced with struggles, some more than others. As I believe I expressed in my previous blog on the subject, I do not believe everyone has access to the American Dream, because for many people the American Dream includes happiness, security, safety for their family, etc. My person American Dream is to be able to attend college although no one in my family has before me, and be able to have a successful career as an attorney in order to support my family so that they never feel stress over my financial burdens. I truly believe that those who are born into poverty have a much tougher time crawling out of it and being able to support their family so that their own children do not suffer. I certainly was not born into poverty, but I was born into a family who could not spare a dime to pay for my college education, thus I will be starting out my adult life with at least $60,000 in student loan debt--and that does not include law school. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to be faced with the idea that your children may never achieve their American Dream due to your inability to ever achieve your own.

Reading Response - The Woman Warrior

I think that the theme of The Woman Warrior that stuck out to me the most was the concept of women having no value to society. I took everything that Maxine Hong Kingston had to say about the childhood of females in Chinese society very seriously. As a sociology major, I took a "Marriage and Family" course a few semesters ago. In this class we were given a small book which took a close look at 4 different cultures' ideas of how a marriage and family should be run. It looked at the Iroquois, traditional Chinese, Tibetan, and a tribe in Africa which I forgot its name (woops). Although all of their practices seemed incredibly foreign and a tad bizarre to me, what struck me the most was the traditional Chinese due to the fact that they are such a huge culture, unlike the other 3 groups that were studied, and many of these abusive (in my opinion) practices still occur. In The Woman Warrior we are first presented with a woman who has been disowned by her family and driven to killing herself and her baby girl because of an act which "disgraced her family" aka adultery. She chooses to kill the baby as well as herself because she knows that the life ahead for her child, because she herself committed the disgrace against the family, would be one of loneliness and isolation. Plus, as the baby was a girl she already had a strike against her in a society which viewed woman as useless besides for the conception of male children. Even by Maxine Hong Kingston naming this chapter the "No-Name Woman" she is illustrating how valueless women were in traditional Chinese society.
I was a little confused with the next part of the story, because I was not sure if the narrator really was a warrior or just fantasizing about being one. Either way, all I could picture in my head the whole time was the Disney version of Mulan. But I found it depressing that no matter how hard she worked to please her parents, she still felt worthless. Perhaps this upset me because I believe many children growing up all over the world have the same worthless feelings due to their parents lack of attention or approval.
I would have to say that my favorite part of this novel was not so much the plot that evolved, but the narrator's mother's "talk-stories." They were all so vivid and completely out there that they were really interesting to read. I actually found the novel as a whole to be a little boring, not really my style, but the random cautionary tales and talk-stories made it easier to get through because I was able to imagine these incredibly odd stories.

Reading Response - Beloved

I read Beloved for the first time when I was a senior in high school for my A.P. English class. I loved the book so much that I chose to write my senior thesis on it. For some reason I got really into the story. I think what touched me the most was the tragicness of Sethe's life and the struggles she was faced with. I truly cannot even begin to fathom a life in which I am not free to do as I please; a life in which I live in fear. Sethe's encounters with schoolteacher and his sons truly made me sick to read and to later think about. As we have discussed so many times in class before, I am not sure what I would do if I were placed with the same life-altering decision that Sethe was faced with - whether or not to kill her children to save them from the life that she so hated and feared. I am not a mother, so I can only speculate what I would do in that situation, but if I knew of a life worse than death, then I would probably attempt to kill my children and myself in order to escape that fate. I wrote my senior thesis on the motherhood themes within Beloved, which is also why I chose to do my article presentation on the Aje mother-daughter relationship. I think that above all other themes- ghosts, slavery, etc.- motherhood reigns supreme in Beloved. The reader is faced with multiple different mother-child relationships (the love so strong that Halle had for Baby Suggs shown in him buying her freedom, the love so strong that Sethe had for her children shown in her trying to kill them even though it hurt her so badly to do so, the attempt of Beloved to unite her and Sethe again, etc.). As I think I've made pretty clear in my desire to read this novel multiple times and write numerous papers/presentations on it, I would certainly recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in some heavy, thought-provoking reading.

Act of Discrimination

Everyone has heard stereotypes about how people tip when eating at restaurants. The idea is that African Americans and young people do not tip well. I worked at a restaurant as a server for 2 years, and I have seen people discriminated against multiple times because of this silly stereotype. I worked at a very nice restaurant and we generally did not receive any tips less than 20-25%. So never once did I witness any individuals of color get discriminated against by any of our servers. Who did get discriminated against, then? Young people. All the time. Anytime a server got a table of anyone who looked younger than 25 (unless if they were with a parent) they would complain about it in the back. Make comments about how they probably won't tip well anyway. And most times, the table of young people was more neglected than the other tables. But in my personal experience, it was NOT the young people that tipped poorly; it was the elderly. Whenever tables of very elderly people would pay their bill, they usually left about a 10% tip. This is not because they received bad service or that they are rude, but because their generation is not used to the recent standard of tipping between 18-20% on a bill. So, while tables of older people generally get the most attention, it almost always ends up that the elderly tip less money than the young people or people of color who often get ignored. Since working at a restaurant and understanding the server's mentality, I now notice how often my friends and I will not get very good service when out to a restaurant, unless we are accompanied by our parents. The servers automatically make the assumption that since we are young we won't tip well, so they don't bother wasting their time being friendly or prompt. Which, of course, ends up leading to angry customers who do not tip well. So the stereotype causes poor behavior on the server's part, which in turn leads to the low tip.

Reading Response - Indian Killer

I absolutely loved the novel "Indian Killer" by Sherman Alexie. It was the type of story that I did not want to put down, because I so badly wanted to know what happened next. There were so many different complex characters and somehow they all ended up interwoven with one another.
I really enjoyed it when Marie snapped at Dr. Clarence Mather about the name that they had given the unknown murderer, "Indian Killer." It was a simple part of the story that perhaps often goes unnoticed by others, but the moment that I picked up the book I assumed, based on the title, that it would be a story about a murderer who killed Indians, not an Indian who killed others. As the novel started and up until the argument made by Marie I was frustrated, thinking that its moronic to call this murderer the Indian Killer, as it contradicts the events taking place. It is a random and perhaps insignificant part of the story, but it is one that I was happy to see, as I had been so annoyed by the title throughout the story until that point.
What I really loved about "Indian Killer" is how John Smith's mental disorder slowly unfolds and becomes more complex and obvious as the story goes on. At first we are presented with a character who perhaps is just shy, does not seem to fit in, an introvert. But as the story progresses we are given different events in his life that demonstrate his mental handicap.
I also enjoyed when there would be entire chapters giving very precise details about what John's life would have been if his 14-year-old birth mother had not given him up for adoption. Alexie does not write these parts of the narration as if they are fantasy, but as if they were also true events of John Smith's life. I would certainly recommend "Indian Killer" to any avid readers who may enjoy a raw look into other cultures.

Reading Response - Fear and Loathing

I absolutely enjoyed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. When I entered the class I assumed we would be reading classics that I already read in high school, and I am thrilled that I was wrong. I had heard of the movie "Fear and Loathing" but I had no idea what it was about. I ended up really enjoying reading it, although in the beginning of the novel I was a bit confused. Was there really a sting ray in the middle of Sunset Boulevard? Of course not, but Thompson's hallucinations were giving him these crazy images. It took me awhile to get used to the flow of the novel, with the way he incorporated his hallucinations as if they were reality, and also the way Thompson would go into flashbacks for pages at a time without warning to the reader. Once I looked up what some of the drugs were I started to get more into the story, understanding how seriously these drugs took over Thompson's world. I kept expecting some trip to be his last, always forgetting it is a nonfiction novel and he clearly could not have written it if it ended in his death. It just shocks me that individuals can live their lives in a constant haze, having no real grasp on reality and always endangering their own lives. While I enjoyed the novel and it certainly kept me interested, it almost made me feel dirty to imagine such a lifestyle. I wanted to take a shower and go to confession after reading it, and I'm not a Catholic.

The American Dream

The American Dream is the idea that individuals from all walks of life living in the United States can find prosperity and success. At a very young age we are taught that any goal can be achieved by honest, hard work. The concept stems from the statement that all men are created equal, thus any man (or woman), whether born into poverty or wealth, has the ability to follow their own dream of success. These days, this may seem quite far-fetched and unrealistic. From a sociological standpoint, the fact is that people born into poverty are given completely different opportunities throughout life and are at a disadvantage from the start than those born into wealthy means. Still, the American Dream is acknowledged universally, which is why so many individuals born in other countries desire to move to the U.S. Sorry, again, to go back to the European examples, but I must in order to make my point. While in France, I became very close with a group of 3 Ecuadorian boys. One had lived in London, England for 7 years and all 3 had been in France for at least the last year. They all dream of coming to the U.S. They have all been able to find work in England and/or France, they all receive education there, but still it is the U.S. that they idolize. I had actually heard them drop the line "the American Dream" and it made me chuckle, because they truly believe that if they could just find the money or get the visas to get into the U.S., that they would be able to make it for sure. They speak of our huge lawns, large houses, swimming pools, etc. as if these are things only movie stars could own in other countries, but in the U.S. they are commonplace. They talk about Miami, New York, California, Las Vegas, like they must be the greatest places in the world, full of endless opportunities. It shocks them when I tell them that the job market is in fact terrible right now and I cannot even find a summer job! Of course, I do not crush their high hopes and optimism of the American Dream. I also hope that it is obtainable; that anyone can succeed in our country, despite the socio-economic status in which they were born. After all, that is what the founding fathers had in mind.