American Girls Living The American Dream: A Study of The American Dream and Immigrant Identity

Hansen, Ditte Diana Grøndal

4. term

English, Master

2023

2023-05-30

66 pages

This thesis examines how the American dream and identity are closely linked in a dialectical relationship and how this relationship influences young immigrant women’s identities in fiction. In order to shed light on this topic, relevant identity creation theories, from multiple fields, such as ingroups and outgroups, performance, hybrid identities, and self-fashioning are chosen. These theories frame the analysis, which is conducted on two novels chosen because they adhere to the young adult fiction genre and the Coming-of-Age genre. The novels are compared and discussed in order to get a deeper understanding of the values they portray on the American dream. The analysis shows that mothers have a great influence on the immigrant daughters’ choices in life. The mothers’ expectations and their role as the authority shape the girls’ identities. However, not every girl meets her mother’s expectations, which influences their identity formation. The discussion finds a correlation between the values of the American dream, and which values the mothers, i.e., the authorities, subscribe to. The paper concludes that the American dream shapes the mothers’ expectations, and, in turn, these expectations shape their daughters’ identities. The girls’ identities can either be uniform or diverse according to how they regard their mothers’ expectations. Keywords: The American dream, identity, Coming-of-Age, ingroups, performance, self-fashioning.

The American dream ; Identitet ; Coming-of-Age ; Ingroups og Outgroups ; Self-fashioning

Download
View record in AAU Student Projects