Member-only story
I Don’t Believe in the American Dream
And I don’t feel bad about it.
I am the daughter of South Asian immigrants. My father was given the opportunity to immigrate to the United States in 1969 for his master’s degree in engineering. A few years later, he married my mom in India and they returned to the United States. They bought a home, had kids they sent off to college and graduate school, and successfully retired with pensions. Did they achieve the American Dream?
The “American Dream” was coined by James Truslow in The Epic of America as a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”
Yes, my parents sacrificed everything for their family. They left their parents, friends, and culture with no money. As a family, we rarely ate out or bought anything at regular price and vacations were spent in cheap motel rooms. I never understood how my white friends always had new toys and all of the Nintendo video games. My brother and I begged my parents for cable TV on multiple occasions and each time they said no, I resented their immigrant frugality more and more.
My parents succeeded in America through a policy that encouraged their education while they pinched pennies and gritted their teeth through racism. They couldn’t afford…
