The 21st
century in the United States shows that culture is constantly changing and the
change is influenced by previous decades. While reading Eddie Huang’s story in
his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, I noticed many similarities between
American cultures in the 21st century and the other decades we
learned in this course. The attitude today toward immigration, religion,
politics, economics, and education are all influenced by previous decades.
Immigration in
relation to economics is probably the main topic in Fresh Off the Boat.
I saw a parallel between the immigration era of the Gilded Age and in the last
decades of the 20th century. During the Gilded Age, America
experienced an era of rapid economic growth as American wages became much
higher than in Europe. Because of the economic opportunities in rapid
industrialized, urbanized, and thriving cities, America encountered a “stream
of immigration… more arrived everyday.”[1]
In the late 20th century and beginning of the 21st
century, the United States experienced a similar trend in immigration as the
Gilded Age. During the last decade of the 20th century after the
collapse of Eastern European Communism and the Soviet Union, the United States
became the world’s sole superpower. During this time, The United states
possessed the world’s most productive economy. The country also dominated
global trade and banking, and the economy grew rapidly due to a sharp fall in
interest rates, price of oil, and the growth of the new computer technologies.[2] Because
of this thriving trend in economics, the Huang family along with many other
families left their homes and came to America. In the memoir, Eddie explained,
“Mom made sure I was aware of money and how important it is… if you asked her
why we came to America, she’d tell you straight up: cold hard cash.”[3] A
solid example of this would be when Eddie’s father went to Orlando to pursue
the restaurant business. Like Chicago for the Everleigh sisters, the Huangs
knew “the rush was real in the those cities…enabled and empowered by new
money.”[4] |
| Eddie Huang (circled) and his family |
The revolutionary
ways of thinking in the 1960s, which created the dramatic change in American
culture and more specifically in education, had a lasting impact. In the 1960s,
college students began to use education to stimulate and form their own ideals,
and the traditional sense of a college education began to disintegrate. The attitude was set by figures like
Andy Weil where “Andy was reluctant to go with the flow…he could see that
having any more of the insights might convince him Harvard was a waste of
time”.[5] This
attitude among college students clearly stuck and now demonstrations of
political activism, anti-war movements, and civil rights movements is a big
part of the culture on college campuses. When Eddie and his friends were denied
the opportunity to debate about the legalization of marijuana in college, he
expressed, “we gave up on doing it their way, we wanted to get free.”[6]
Eventually, Eddie left his first college, but unlike many of the young
college-age men and women in the 1960s who simply just “dropped out”, Eddie
still sought after a degree. Unlike previous decades, today, a college education
is more of a necessity. Since the recession, jobs became scarcer and most employers
will only hire college graduates with degrees. Thus, American universities
began to see a boom in applicants in the past decade.
Even though I am a decade younger than
Eddie, most things seemed to have remained the same. For example in politics, the main issues that divided the
US political landscape when Eddie grew up are the same issues that continue to
divide this country today. Some of the main ones are global warming, gun
control, music file sharing, drug sentencing guidelines, abortion, the recession,
and “the war on terror”[7].
Another example would be the Internet, which revolutionized how we live our
lives. An example from Fresh off the Boat
is when Karmaloop, an online retail store, “had more buying power than any
physical store.”[8]
Americans began relying on the Internet for shopping, information, and
communication, and still continues today.
[1]
Karen Abbot, Sin in the Second City: Madams,
Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America's Soul (New York:
Random House, 2007), Prologue xxiii.
[2] S. Mintz, and S. McNeal.
Digital History, " Overview of the 1970-2000 Era." Accessed April 28,
2014. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=19&smtid=1.
[5]
Don Lattin, The Harvard
Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil
Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America (New
York: HarperOne, 2011), 59.
[8]
Huang. Fresh off the
Boat, 230.
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