IN THE RICE BOX: Melting Pot or Pressure Cooker?

OLIVIA CHEUNG
Editor-in-Chief

When my mother told me about her departure from her homeland, crouched in the decks of a ship with hundreds of others for a month, the emptiness I felt in that moment remained a permanent fixture in my heart to today.

This part of the American Dream is not uncommon to many of us who grew up listening to our parents’ hardships, whether it was entering a new country alone or having to work multiple part-time jobs for a single meal. This dream is one that preaches success through perseverance, but also cultivates generations whose lives revolve around their parents’ sacrifices.

Our parents came to a free country not only for the opportunity of a prosperous future, but also to live a life undefined by others’ rules and limitations. By defining our choices and lives based on what we think our parents want, we contradict the entire reason they came here in the first place: for the freedom to be ourselves.

Every failure I experienced seemed like an intentional slap to my mother’s face. I was not failing only myself, but ruthlessly stomping on all of the sacrifices she made. Thus, I grew up living in my mother’s shadow, terrified of making a decision she would consider wrong, even if it was the right one for me.

It only seems right to live for the woman who gave up so much for me, but this mindset could not be more wrong. It’s easy to remember all of the difficulties our parents have faced when they constantly remind us when speaking about our futures. What’s hard to remember is that we’re all individuals and must learn to live for ourselves.