The Dynamics of the Diaspora: Exploring the American Dream

Rishika Pangam

SYBA

Regardless of social status or birth circumstances, James Truslow Adams stated that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to aptitude or achievement" when he invented the phrase "American Dream" in 1931. This idealistic aspiration has found its way into the cornerstone of the great American ethos and is inextricably linked to the immigrant experience. This so-called dream however fails to find a foot in reality and is now even further unattainable to the greater public. Through the use of the movie "Everything, everywhere, all at once," I attempt to draw parallels between the protagonist’s “failed” success story and the collapsing American dream. I also explore key features of the American Dream, such as struggling to ensure a brighter future for your children, cultural capital, failure to gain social economic mobility, and the individualistic nature of American society. The article emphasises on the diasporic immigrant experience and the nihilism caused due to loss of identity and the collapse of the American dream.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—these words laid the foundation of the United States Declaration of Independence and became the ethos of the American dream, where every individual, despite the circumstances of their birth, can and should strive to attain a life defined not by heredity but by their own merit. This utopian dream ushered in multitudes of people who came to the undiscovered West with hopes and aspirations to secure their future, and though the charter did not necessarily define happiness with upward social and economic mobility, monetary success ended up being inextricably linked with “American success”. 

Asian-Americans were certainly not the first group of immigrants to arrive in the United States; however, their history in the land of dreams has always been defined by excruciatingly unfair policies of exclusion and inequality. Beginning in the 1850s, young Chinese men arrived in the country as cheap contract labourers working as miners, farmers, and fishermen, accounting for 20% of California's labour force. However, during the 1876 depression, they were falsely accused of stealing jobs, and anti-Chinese legislation quickly followed the West coast. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only United States law to prevent naturalisation based on race, drastically reduced Chinese immigration, which can be understood as a hypocrite act against the ideals of equality and fair treatment. The lack of business opportunities for the immigrants led them to take up jobs that no one else would, and in the male-dominated era of the Gold Rush, that job was the laundromat business. 

One can't help but notice the similarities between the Chinese immigrants and Evelyn Wang from the movie written by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who chose the laundromat business because there was nothing else they could do in a system that actively rejected people like them. Their laundromat business, however, did not allow them to rise above their economic status; several of the Chinese laundries drew customers by charging 15% less than those run by white people, but they also had to put up with 16-hour workdays in unfavourable working conditions. The American Dream thrives on the denial of self-gratification, instead preaching sacrifices in the present to secure a glorious future. The bootstrap theory further perpetuates labourers' willingness to work in unreasonable conditions and encourages them to accept these dehumanising conditions by lying to them that their sacrifices would ensure a better future for their children and that they would be able to pull themselves up from the ground. This promise of wealth and sacrifices especially ties in well with the quintessential immigrant, who believes that their sacrifices will be rewarded. The Wangs are similarly enticed by the new world's false promises. They enter the country with great optimism but are introduced to the audience as overworked, burnt-out individuals who have lost their passion and zest for life. It is no surprise to see one of the Evelyns in the multiverse be a celebrity who has defeated the odds against her, is successful in her passions, and is appreciated for them. 

A groundbreaking study on economic mobility and the American Dream was co-authored by Erin Currier, director of financial stability and mobility at The Pew Charitable Trusts, in 2012. Economic mobility is mostly the result of accidents of birth, according to Pew. According to Currier, "stickiness at the ends" is a phenomenon in which exactly 66 percent of people born in the two income levels with the lowest rates of survival remain there as adults, and exactly 66 percent of those born in the two income levels with the highest rates of survival remain there. This "intergenerational persistence" can largely be attributed to the availability of cultural capital for them. The rich have better access to education, a more formal style of speech, stronger community support, and power over the discourse of etiquette. They are better able to foster their passions and hobbies since they are not overworked, and the Wang family seems to lack access to all these resources, which is further fueled by their inability to communicate in English with the IRS and their continued dependence on their daughter. 

Joy, their American-born daughter, seems to have the upper hand as she was raised in the system, but she too is dejected and tired. The exhaustion of being expected to work hard and the unstable relationship with her mother have drained her, and her love for another woman threatens not only the deeply ingrained homophobia of her family elders but also the American dream of the ideal heterosexual family consisting of a man, his wife, and their children. It also does not help that Joy struggles to speak Mandarin, causing Evelyn to fear losing her daughter to America.  When Joy drops out of college it further adds fuel to the fire. The failure to succeed in these idealistic aspirations drives her to a path of self-rejection and a pessimistic worldview. Her pessimism and nihilism, embodied by the "everything bagel," reject the inherently sunny and optimist "can-do" American attitude, raising flags on a land founded on dreams and hopes. Joy is not the anomaly; she belongs to a generation that is all too familiar with the socio-political issues of their era and has become desensitised to the pits of life. Adapting to a nihilistic viewpoint in which nothing matters aids in coping with the failing societal structure.

We are also introduced to Evelyn as the overworked mother; watching the woman juggle (and fail) her responsibilities as a mother, the immigrant managing her job, and a daughter wanting to prove her worth to her father is all too familiar. The movie sensibly does not romanticise her exhaustion from her chores, managing to critique the unfair expectations we have for women to manage both their home and work. The fatigue from this scene acts as a sharp juxtaposition to Evelyn’s alternate reality as a rock. It feels weirdly freeing to watch the two women just exist, with no expectations or burdens, freely talking, uninterrupted. When we see the woman work alone and fail, her exhaustion driving her away from her family, we see America's individualistic and lone-wolf nature being challenged.  It is only during the climax of the movie that Evelyn realises that "Alone, we are all useless," emphasising the need for communal support and care; after all, it takes a village to raise a child. However, one cannot ignore the diaspora fuelled due to the clash of opposing perspectives. I’m instantly reminded of yet another Michele Yeoh movie (Crazy Rich Asians), where her character accurately identifies the American individualistic drive for happiness, which drastically opposes the communal nature of Asian communities. "You're a foreigner, an American, and all Americans think about is their own happiness.”, drawing an interesting insight between the self-driven American vs the community oriented Asian society. Joy becomes the figure representing this diasporic experience of not being able to fulfil her own self driven aspirations and her communal obligations, essentially being rejected from both the cultures. As the film depicts, criticising the American Dream as a broken capitalist venture has resulted not only in economic inequality and stagnation in social mobility but also in a sense of cultural and personal identity dissociation.

So, is Evelyn Wang a failure because she did not succeed in achieving her aspirations and failed to identify the unfair romanticization of the immigrant success narrative?

“So, Even Though You Have Broken My Heart Yet Again, I Wanted To Say, In Another Life, I Would Have Really Liked Just Doing Laundry And Taxes With You.”

Yes, she did fail in her journey, but as the quote postulates, her experiences are still valid. The tasks that seemed insignificant in the face of the greater universe were also the ones that bonded her closer to her family. The "happiness" the American Dream promised was ironically fulfilled when Evelyn acknowledged her strained relationship with her family and herself and expressed her willingness to work through these shortcomings. It was her communal and familial bonds that saved the mother-daughter duo from their pessimistic nihilism (the doomed everything bagel).

Evelyn’s journey cannot be defined in terms of success or failure, and the solution to overcome a broken dream is perhaps to restructure the associations we make with success. The better and fuller life James Truslow described must extend beyond the benchmark of economic success and towards a more holistic and communal sense of belonging and fulfilment.

References 

Ballard, J. (2020, July 17). In 2020, do people see the American Dream as attainable? YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/07/18/american-dream-attainable-poll-survey-data 

Chiao, S. (2019, February 14). Why the Chinese laundry stereotype persists. Goldthread. https://www.goldthread2.com/identity/why-chinese-laundry-stereotype-persists/article/3000121 

Norman, G. (n.d.). Asian Americans Then and Now. Asia Society. https://asiasociety.org/education/asian-americans-then-and-now 

Science X. (2018, September 3). Lack of social mobility more of an “occupational hazard” than previously known. https://phys.org/news/2018-09-lack-social-mobility-occupational-hazard.html 

The Future of the American Dream. (2015, June 29). The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/future-american-dream/ 

The Pew Charitable Trusts. (2012). Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations. In The Pew Charitable Trusts. Retrieved February 16, 2023, from https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/pursuingamericandreampdf.pdf