Perlawanan diskursif terhadap mimpi Amerika dalam novel American Dirt karya Jeanine Cummins

United States of America is known as a country that promises its people or immigrants who come to America to become successful by providing ‘American Dream’ as the country’s national ethos. These people are given equal chances to bring out their dreams and aspirations. However, American Dream is not always the dream for everyone as experienced by the characters in Christina Henriques’ novel The Book of Unknown Americans. Issue of injustice shadows immigrants who are in search of this dream. Facing problems of injustice such as racism, different treatment of immigrants, and sexual harassment are inevitable for these Latino people when they first come to the United States. This study is aimed at discussing the failures and injustices that Latino immigrants’ characters of the novel must face when they attempt of achieving the American Dream. The method used in this study is qualitative method. The data of this research are in the forms of language and its discourse. Stuart Hall’s Theory of Representation is used to analyze the research data. The results of this study show that not all-American dreams can be fulfilled easily, in particular for Latino immigrant characters in the novel. What have been faced by these characters are significant experiences to learn for anyone who wants to pursue their dream in United States of America.

In Filipino and Filipino American fiction, the American Dream is a prevalent theme. Specifically, Filipinos’ exposure to the American Dream is facilitated through forms of American media and entertainment. These mediated American spectacles present the myth that the United States is superior in all aspects. This is evident in Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, Lysley Tenorio’s “Monstress,” and Bino A. Realuyo’s The Umbrella Country, in which Filipino characters internalize U.S. supremacist beliefs and what E.J.R. David calls “colonial mentality” by adopting Western American standards in their everyday lives. Their desire to emulate the American Dream is further seen in their inevitable migration from the Philippines to the U.S. These works of fiction demonstrate the relationship between media and culture, especially as theorized by Marxist critics such as Guy Debord and Stuart Hall who view media as one of the primary tools of dominant societies to disseminate and uphold hegemonic ideologies. By exploring how American media affects Filipinos in these works of fiction, one can see how media plays a significant role in some Filipinos’ beliefs about the Philippines and the U.S. especially in this contemporary age of globalization and mass media.

* Abbreviations: AAP — : American Academy of Pediatrics VVN — : Vital Village Network The American dream is a fundamental ethos of the nation passed from generation to generation. In 1931, James Truslow Adams coined the term as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” Most Americans across all incomes still believe their children and grandchildren will achieve the American dream.1 Yet, in reality, it is out of most children’s reach. The American dream is intrinsically tied to the capacity for upward mobility, whereby children can grow up to surpass their parent’s income level. The groundbreaking work of Harvard Professor of Public Economics Dr Raj Chetty reveals that there is less upward mobility in the United States today than at any other time, likely because of lower overall economic growth and greater inequality in its distribution. Specifically, Chetty et al2 found that, since 1940, the fraction of children who earn more than their parents has fallen from >90% to ∼50%. However, the decline in the American dream is not equally distributed across the United States. Chetty et al3 has revealed great variation in upward mobility, with significant differences even among neighborhoods within the same city. Higher–upward-mobility areas are associated with less residential segregation and income inequality and greater … Address correspondence to Arvin Garg, MD, MPH, Department of Pediatrics, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655. E-mail: Arvin.Garg{at}umassmemorial.org

Social discrimination is a never-ending issue that happens not only in reality but also in fiction novels. It is described as perpetual inequality of people based on their disability, illness, sexual orientation, religion, or any other. Hence, literature as a cultural product has a potential to deliver social discrimination discourse. This research aims to discuss how the social discrimination depicted in Kiera Cass’ The Selection. The Selection is a story about an event to find a prince’s bride in Illéa. The caste system and absolute monarchy exist in Illéa’s kingdom. Depending on their jobs, people are divided into eight castes. In this research, the representation theory by Stuart Hall is applied. The study’s analysis is qualitative with the novel as primary data and other supporting sources as secondary data. The collected data are used to indicate how social discrimination between castes constructed in the novel, how it is related to the condition in the United States of America in 1900s, and where the author took a side with. The result of the research shows that social discrimination occurs as the absolute position of the caste and it is difficult to change this situation. The novel’s social discrimination is also related to the real condition of the United States of America in the early 1900s, which includes job, partner, and lifestyle aspects. The author appeared to position herself more on the side of the lower caste at first, but no solution is offered as a result of the lower caste’s work.

This paper is entitled "The Glory of Women in an Islamic Perspective". This paper is also based on the importance of discussing women, more specifically from the thoughts of the great scholar, Buya Hamka. Buya Hamka's thoughts in this paper are obtained from his work, namely a book entitled "Buya Hamka Talks about Women". The purpose of this paper is to find out what Buya Hamka thinks about the glory of women from an Islamic perspective. The paradigm used in this paper is the constructivist paradigm. This paper includes a literature review using qualitative methods. In this paper, data collection was carried out by dissecting the contents of Buya Hamka's book and using books, articles, and journals as additional references. Stuart Hall's representation theory is the theory used in this paper. In Stuart Hall's theory, a problem is explained linguistically and then found the meaning of the language. The result of this paper is that Buya Hamka represents the glory of women by providing an explanation of several things, namely: women are mentioned a lot in the Qur'an, women receive the same respect as men, women are given tasks that are in accordance with their physical condition and condition, women gain self-respect, the Prophet's love for his daughters, a mother must be respected, women must be loved and respected, women (wives) are not wrong in the incident of the descent of Adam and Eve from heaven, women are glorified above angels, women are given guarantees property rights, women have special rights.Keywords: Buya Hamka, Women's Glory, Representation.

This research examines the representation of an Iranian queer Muslim teenager in Arvin Ahmadi's How It All Blew Up. It also evaluates how the novel describes the sufferings of an Iranian queer Muslim teenager through symbolism, which Ahmadi uses as his aesthetic strategies. This research is descriptive qualitative, which examines the primary text by using close textual analysis. This research engages with Stuart Hall's theory of representation and Chris Barker's queer theory. The research investigates the symbolism representing the sufferings of an Iranian queer Muslim teenager and what aesthetic strategies the author uses to question mainstream society, which tends to exclude a queer teenager from “normal” belonging. Indeed, the analysis is engaged with Stuart Hall's theory of representation and Chris Barker's queer theory. This research discovered five representations of the protagonist character in the novel, namely Amir is represented as an Iranian queer Muslim that was born to an Iranian Muslim immigrant family, an Iranian queer Muslim that grew up in a Muslim family that did not strictly implement Islamic teachings, an irreligious Iranian queer Muslim, an Iranian queer Muslim that was attracted to people of the same sex, and an Iranian queer Muslim that struggled with his family's acceptance of his queerness. Indeed, this research discovers four symbols that are used to represent the suffering of an Iranian queer Muslim teenager, including the symbol of fortress, tunnel, tattoo, and wall. Thus, Ahmadi’s novel reveals how a queer Muslim teenager struggles to fight for his rights to be acknowledged and appreciated in the ideas of “normality” and social belonging.

Arthur miller (1915-2005), as the most outstanding master of drama in the United States and known as the "conscience of American drama", accurately depicted the post-war real society in the United States and the changes in social values. In 1949, Miller wrote the Death of a salesman, which became the peak of his drama creation and won the Pulitzer prize and the New York theatre critics circle award. The play tells the story of the United States in the turbulent social background of the 1940s, the protagonist Willy Loman's dream and the collapse of the whole family. By means of the combination of realism and expressionism, the drama reproduces the changes of social values and the sadness of the little people. In previous studies, most scholars focused on the disillusionment of the "American dream" of the minor characters in the drama, and took the deterioration of the "American dream" and the change of values in American society as the starting point. However, it may be difficult to understand Arthur Miller's interpretation of the "American dream" in the play without tracing the root of the "American dream" and exploring the deep cultural genes of the United States. This paper aims to analyse Arthur Miller's contradictory writings on the American dream in Death of a salesman from the perspective of meme.

In the United States (U.S.), adolescent identity development occurs within a socio-historical context characterized by an ethnic-racial hierarchy, as well as an unequal distribution of power and privilege. The current study examined the associations among two ethnic-racial identity components (i.e., exploration, resolution), perceived ethnic-racial discrimination, and U.S. American identity among White, Black, and Latino adolescents in the U.S. A cross-sectional sample of self-identified White, Black, and Latino adolescents (N = 1,378) completed self-administered surveys (M age = 16.16 years; SD = 1.12, 52.8% female). A sequential model-building approach using multiple-group path analysis revealed that both exploration and resolution were positively associated with U.S. American for White and Black adolescents, but no association emerged for Latino adolescents. Furthermore, among Black adolescents, the association between exploration and U.S. American identity was moderated by perceived ethnic-racial discrimination, such that these two identity dimensions were positively associated only among those who reported higher levels of discrimination. Overall, ethnic-racial identity and U.S. American identity were more strongly associated among White and Black adolescents compared to Latino adolescents. Future research is needed to better understand the intersections between ethnic-racial identity and U.S. American identity.

Reviewed by: Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream by Tony Tian-Ren Lin Justin Michael Doran Tony Tian-Ren Lin, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020) The intersection of immigration, economic life, and charismatic Christianity has never felt so vital to understanding America as it does in the wake of 2020. Political coalitions have been reforged by the powerful popular response to these issues and these communities. And yet scholars and journalists have worked with a paucity of serious inquiries into the communities at the center of this whirlwind: Latin American immigrants to the United States whose Christian devotion has come to mediate the fraught promises of economic prosperity. Tony Tian-Ren Lin's book, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream, provides this much-needed detail. The study includes deep, qualitative research into three Spanish-speaking congregations in Virginia, California, and New York, bringing them into a single analysis of, as Lin calls them, "Prosperity Gospel Latinos." The reverend Lin immigrated from Argentina and received his doctorate in the sociology of religion, making his insight into these communities both methodologically rigorous and sensitive to the faith of his subjects. The idea that drives Lin's analysis is that "Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal" theology enables Latinos in the United States to experience the meaningful arc of the American Dream despite confronting the serious barriers to realizing it in their lives. Or as Lin puts it, "it keeps [End Page 119] the American dream alive, even when everything around them feels like an American myth or even nightmare" (17). The book is part of the new Where Religion Lives series by University of North Carolina Press, which has the stated goal of publishing accessibly written ethnographies from the discipline of religious studies. It is easy to see why Lin's book was published in the series, as it is exceptionally clear in both prose and argumentation. The book proceeds thematically around the animating, titular argument. It begins with an outline of the three churches and the communities cultivated by their prosperity practices. It then decodes the theological logic operating within these churches, especially those beliefs particular to the prosperity gospel. The following chapter explains how church members come to convert to this Christian devotion, and the final chapter describes the social (particularly the familial) structure that emerges from this devotion. In addition to being well-organized as an ethnography, Lin consistently roots his analysis in human stories that remind the reader that these religious structures are inhabited by real people living complex lives. The second and third chapters of the work (on theology and conversion) are both good candidates for assigning to students, as they would allow real conversation about the meaning this movement has in American society. As an ethnographic study, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and their American Dream is thoroughly humane. That is, Tony Lin treats his subjects compassionately and writes about them seriously. As the most indispensable element of any systematic study of a community, we should regard this work as a success. As a work of scholarship, the book succumbs to several pitfalls of ethnographic studies. Qualitative studies in the sociology of religion occasionally neglect rigorous historical background on the movements that appear in the context of their research, and that is the case here. There is only a cursory historical introduction to the Pentecostal movement that leans toward the synthesizing overviews of Harvey Cox and away from the detailed work of scholars such as Grant Wacker or Cecil Robeck. There are essential gestures to the most important scholars of Latino Pentecostalism—Gastón Espinosa, Daniel Ramirez, Arlene Sánchez-Walsh—but no extended engagement with the questions posed by those scholars. Instead, this is a book engaged with a narrower subset of scholarship within the sociology of religion. Lin's choice of conversation partners has clearly shaped the study—an informant given the pseudonym Gerardo seems like a nod to Gerardo Martí, whose influence is apparent in both the general feel of this study and a back cover blurb. Martí is the author of lucid qualitative studies of multiethnic churches as seen, for example, in A Mosaic of...

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Literature, Social Science, and the Development of American Migration Narratives in the Twentieth Century

The article analyzes the Chinese and American dreams and traces the difference between the ideal social needs of China and the United States of America. The aim of the article is to define a similar and distinct the “Chinese dream” and the “American dream” in the perception of the theoretical and scientific community. That is why the study of the concepts of the Chinese and American dreams is relevant and of considerable scientific value. The main methodological principles of the research are the analysis and comparison, which allowed determining the key parameters for the evaluation and selection of factors influencing intercultural interaction and cooperation, holism and individualism of the “Chinese dream” with the “American dream”. In addition, the historicism method was applied to consider the primary forms of the “Chinese dream” and the “American dream” and with which you can provide insight into the difference between the ideal social needs of China and the United States. Conclusions. It is proved that the original form of the “Chinese dream” has come from China ideal society`s requirements and had a more secular character since the earliest times. The source of the “American dreams” was the “Eastern dream” and a puritan reform movement to promote American political and social reforms. The “American Dream” is based on individualistic values such as personal prosperity, which appears via personal achievements, family happiness and material well-being. The “American dream” journey begins with political system, economic environment, cultural tolerance, etc. Moreover, on the basis of the intrinsic rights to liberty, equality and fraternity, Americans have specifically identified the right to the pursuit of happiness. The “Chinese dream” is more expressed in the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the prosperity and power of the country, etc., it is more comprehensive, while the “American dream” is mostly realistic and material.

This article aims to analyze the cultural representation of Banyuwangi in the Banyuwangi Ethno Carnival (BEC) using Stuart Hall's representation theory approach. The main concepts applied in this analysis are change and resistance, which are used to understand how cultural symbols are represented and interpreted in BEC. The data collection process was carried out through a literature study. Where the data obtained comes from the results of research and other people's scientific works that are studied and then developed. Data analysis was carried out by combining Stuart Hall's representation theory concepts with the findings found in the BEC program. The results of the analysis of the literature study show that BEC is an important vehicle for representing Banyuwangi's cultural identity through modifications of costumes, dances, music, and other performances. In addition, the media plays an important role in the spread and influence of these cultural representations. In the context of Stuart Hall's representation theory, change refers to the transformation of cultural symbols in BEC, while resistance describes the process of building cultural representations through interactions and agreements between BEC actors, government and society. Through this process, Banyuwangi's cultural identity is represented and interpreted in the BEC event. The implication of the results of this research is the need for continuous support in developing and promoting Banyuwangi culture through collaborative efforts between the government, cultural actors and the community. In this case, BEC can be an effective tool to strengthen and broaden understanding and appreciation of Banyuwangi's cultural identity

The Chinese immigration experience began in the mid-19th century, driven by economic opportunities and marked by significant challenges. In contrast, Jewish immigration, primarily occurring in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was driven by severe religious and racial persecution in Europe. Jewish immigrants sought refuge from violence and the Holocaust, finding a relatively open environment in the U.S. to maintain their religious and cultural traditions. This paper examines the immigration patterns and cultural identities of the Chinese and Jewish communities in the United States, highlighting their distinct historical backgrounds and experiences. This study applies theoretical frameworks from sociology and anthropology, including Everett Lee’s “Push-Pull Theory,” Stuart Hall’s cultural identity theory, and Anthony Giddens’ theory of modernity, to analyze how these communities’ immigration patterns have influenced their cultural identities. The study compares the Chinese community’s economic-driven integration and the Jewish community’s diverse approach to cultural preservation. The findings provide insights into the complexities of cultural identity within the U.S. multicultural landscape and highlight the varied strategies adopted by different immigrant groups. Limitations of this study include its focus on Chinese and Jewish communities, which may not fully represent other immigrant experiences. Future research should consider a broader range of immigrant groups to enhance understanding of cultural integration and identity.

Film as a popular cultural medium has an important role in representing ethnic identity and social reality. The problem studied in this study is how the Chinese community is represented in the film Apanya Dong (1983) by Nya' Abbas Akup which was produced during the New Order period, when Chinese cultural expression was limited by state policies. The purpose of this research is to understand how the film presents Chinese ethnic identity in the midst of assimilation pressure. The research uses a qualitative method with a film study approach as a social discourse. The analysis was carried out through Stuart Hall's theory of representation and the concept of cultural universality from Kluckhohn and Kroeber, by examining the narrative aspects, characters, and cultural elements displayed. The results of the study show that the film Apanya Dong showcases the Chinese community through characters such as Babah Ho Liang, Pei Pei, and Ti Lian Nio, as well as raising cultural elements in the form of belief systems, social structures, traditional clothing, language, and arts such as barongsai, erhu, and xylophone kromong. Although the portrayal is often packed in comedy and stereotypes, the characters are still shown to have agency. Thus, this film serves as a cultural mirror as well as a means of subtle resistance, which emphasizes that film can be an inclusive medium of representation and strengthen understanding of Indonesia's cultural diversity.

The American Dream is a central component of American culture and image; its frequent exploration in popular culture means the concept is familiar to domestic and global audiences. However, in the context of a profound economic recession and internal social and political struggles, the American Dream is met with increasing skepticism, both within the United States’ borders and abroad. In this paper, I investigate how contemporary representations of the American Dream on film are reflecting and dealing with this remarkable historical period when the Dream is in decline. I examine the concept’s origins, exploring how it has evolved to mean domestic felicity and economic security. I discuss how it has been interpreted in popular culture, with a focus on more recent interpretations, and in particular a close reading of the 2011 film The Descendants. Employing textual analysis, personal observations, and an analysis of the film’s wider cultural meaning in light of its box office performance, awards, and reviews, I argue that the film represents a reworking of the American Dream, emphasizing land and domestic felicity over economic security and the “good life.” I suggest that this conception is likely a result of the current state of the Dream, particularly the impossibility of achieving the “economic security” component.