Page | 2
Karina Cruz
The American Dream
Midterm Project
March 19, 2017
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that in my future my family and I will live just as lavish and swell as I am now. I have watched my parents juggle multiple jobs each while putting themselves through college and be supportive, helpful, and loving parents to my sister and me. My dream is to not let the hardships my family has been through not be taken for granted. My dream is to play college basketball while pursuing a career in sports marketing career and ultimately take care of my parents and sister the way they have taken care of me. In the recent years I have watched some of their dreams come true thus giving me the motivation and enthusiasm to believe and chase mine even harder every day.
There is no doubt in my mind that the inspiration to my dream comes from the hardships my family had to overcome to get to the social class we are in now. Much like Jurgis and his family in The Jungle my family on both my mother and fathers side embarked on a journey to go from rags to riches. In the 1980’s my grandparents on my dad’s left Puerto Rico and moved to New York in pursuit of better opportunities and living conditions. Soon after my grandfather had a heart attack which lead to his death. My dad, at the age of sixteen, had to help his mom care for his younger brother and ten younger sisters. He was and still is a dependable and helpful son, a dependable big brother and a loving and caring father. While Jurgis and my dad maybe be different types of immigrants from different eras and parts of the world they were both inspired and motivated by family and providing them the most that they can. The Mouskewitz family in The American Tail moved from Russia to escape poverty and the living conditions they had to endure, in 1973 my grandparents on mother’s side moved to New York from the Dominican Republic with my mom and her oldest sister to escape the same odds. After moving to New York my grandmother gave birth to two more girls, so they became a family of six. The Dominican culture strongly believes in the stereotypical gender roles where women are supposed to cook, clean, and do other womanly duties. My grandfather reminds me a lot of Jim Anderson from the tv show Father Knows best. Like Jim, he had rough days at work and came home with the expectations that the home duties were taken care of by the women in his life. In addition, my grandparents expected their daughters to be stellar scholars because my grandparents were not fortunate enough to have higher than a middle school education. My mother finished high school top of her class and could have gone to Cornell University, but decided to put her further education and dreams on pause so she can dedicate her time to her daughter, just like April Wheeler did after college in The Revolutionary Road. The difference between my parents and the characters from The Jungle and The Revolutionary Road, is they never stopped to settle. F...
