American Like Me

The American dream is a motif that appears throughout the essay collection, and it’s a symbol of what lies in wait for those who choose to immigrate to the US. “American” here is a misnomer, however, as America is large—it includes both Central and South America (although many, especially those in the US, neglect to remember this). For most, however, the American dream symbolizes the possibility of freedom, safety, and fortune in the US if one works hard enough to obtain it. A belief in the American dream has brought countless immigrants to the US and made the US a better place. Unfortunately, the current iteration of the American dream often hides strains of nationalism and American exceptionalism that can play out in racist and xenophobic ways despite the term’s earlier origins of a dream for anyone who sought it.

Melting pot is a term that describes the US’s multiculturalism. Americans used the term as a positive attribute to show how accepting of others the country was. With the discourse and actions surrounding civil rights and racism in 2020, however, many believe the US isn’t as welcoming nor accepting of multiculturalism as it claims to be.

Liza Koshy claims that the US is a salad bowl more than a melting pot as a salad bowl allows each individual ingredient to keep its flavor but still exist as a whole. This works better for immigrants who want to keep their identities but still exist in the larger entity that is the US. A melting pot, according to Koshy, renders everything homogenous and tasteless. And it forces people to give up the richness that is their heritage.

Carmen Perez helps to define intersectionality as an “[…] overlap of cultures, races, and ‘social disadvantages’” (74). Like many of the essayists in this collection, Perez became an activist because she saw just how effective multiculturalism is in bringing people together. This togetherness through overlapping cultures is also at the heart of Linda Sarsour’s essay, where she posits that radical love for strangers and embracing others as community and family helps show that differences bring so much to the collective table.