Spaces and exchanges: Is the American Dream real ?

Spaces and exchanges

        I am going to talk about the notion Spaces and exchanges. First of all I would like to give a definition of this notion. Spaces and exchanges can be defined as the different spaces of the world, who are today, more connected to each others. This year in class, we studied several documents about spaces and exchanges. I will attempt to answer the question : Is the American Dream have real ? To answer this question, I will talk about the real American Dream, and the power of the Latinos migrants.

        The first document I have chosen is “Don’t send me back”, an extract of the book Ellis Island, written in 1983 by Fred Mustard STEWART. It deals with the problem of the migrants who want to come in USA to have better conditions of life. This text represents really good the fact that many migrants want to escape to their problem like the war or the starvation. So in this text we can see that the main character, Jacob, who want to enter in the country because there is the second world war and because he don’t want to die. It means that people who aren’t living in the USA believe in the American Dream and that they think there is the possibility to have a better life in America. Through this text, the author denounce the bad conditions of life in the others countries and he is valorizing America in saying that people who live in the misery directly think about coming living in the United States and enjoying the American Dream. According to me, the author believe in the American Dream.

        The second document I have chosen to illustrate the real American Dream is Rihanna’s song : “American Oxygen”. According to me, Rihanna probably means that if we believe in the American Dream, then in America everything is possible and it doesn’t matter where you come from, you have the possibility to succeed and climb the social ladder. She is trying to point out America’s duality. On the one hand, America can be proud of itself, of its achievements, but on the other hand there are still problems and we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend they don’t exist. She say that America is also capable of horrifying things. To conclude, I think that Rihanna is still attached to the American Dream. Although, she is aware that it may no longer exist, she tries to cling to it. She keeps “Chasing” it. She knows this dream is not easy to achieve, but she believes America can do great things. According to this song, I think Americans are still attached to the old America, and they don’t want to see it change.

        The third document I have chosen to illustrate the power of the Latinos migrants is an extract of a reportage on the CNN Channel. It is a reportage did by Monica C. Lozano in May, 2015. In this reportage Monica tell the importance and the influence of the Latinos in America. We can see that according to Monica, the Latinos are very importants for the Americans because she say that the immigration of Latino people is a “demographic opportunity” (l.1), “Latinos literally represent America’s future” (l.4). Latinos will be the future work-face of USA and represent one quarter of the population by 2050. They want the same rights and life as white Americans but they haven’t succeed yet due to the lack of a cohesive group. I think that if they are the future of America they may be better considered and better treated. I also chose the text “Do you speak Spanglish ?” extract of the Associated press, an American press agency in New-York. This article was write by Deborah Kong, it was the press of the Monday, November 4, 2002. In this article we can see the influence of Spanglish. We can note that Spanglish is using on TV, but not only. We can read that Spanglish is using in books, in songs, with friends or family. People refuse to speak Spanglish in front of other people they don’t know. It reveals that people are always thinking that language is a lawful culture. A prof translated “Don Quixote” in Spanglish to answer to people who thought that this language can’t be taken seriously until it would produced a classic. This persons say also that Spanglish has no future, that say that because they think that “A person who doesn’t speak English well in the USA doesn’t have a future” (l.70-72). Those two documents show us that Americans always have mixed feelings about the migrants.

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