He came to the US from China to pursue the American Dream;
She went from the US to the East to find spiritual enlightenment.
He owned a Chinese restaurant and cooked Chinese food to earn a living;
She ate pasta and pizza in Italy-- the pursuit of pleasure-- as her way to heal.
He struggled and strived to write poems in English, his second language;
She immersed herself in Italian and Sanskrit environments, avoiding English, her mother tongue.
They never met each other, and won’t ever meet because they are from two different books, Nan Wu from A Free Life and Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love. In real life, their paths probably never cross; it just so happened that I read the two books recently. I started EPL first and in the middle, switched to A Free Life when it arrived. Because of the concurrent reading, things got a little intertwined. I am not a book critic, so this is not a book review. It's more of my recent thoughts upon reading these two books.
I think of the American Dream.
As a Chinese immigrant with a very similar background, I can identify with Nan in a lot of ways, esp. with the idea of the American Dream. What is the American Dream? According to Wikipedia, the American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. No matter what your background is, and no matter how poor your family is, you have an equal chance to make it in America as long as you work hard. In this sense, Nan, as well as many of us here, seems to have achieved the American Dream, with a lakefront house, a stable job and a loving wife. However, near the end of the novel, we see Nan, disgusted by his realization that he has been making up excuses for not writing poems during all these years of pursuing the so-called American Dream, burns a bunch of banknotes. In the very end, he has an epiphany that the American Dream is “not something to be realized but something to be pursued only”. He decides to give up the illusion of material success and “be brave enough to devote himself not to making money but to writing poetry”. The novel makes me feel differently about the American Dream. Now that we have obtained the material abundance, the American Dream is more of a spiritual or ideological concept. For first-generation immigrants, settling down in America does not mean you have achieved your American Dream. It is just the first step in your spiritual journey.
On the other hand, when we look at Liz Gilbert in EPL, at the very beginning, she already has everything in term of material possessions. In fact, she has it all: an intellectually fulfilling and financially lucrative job, a family-oriented hu*****and, and a prestigious home in the Hudson Valley in addition to an apartment in Manhattan. She is living the American Dream. But she is in anguish because she doesn’t want this kind of life; she doesn’t want to have a kid and she doesn’t want to be married anymore. She later gives up all of these material belongings just to get out of the marriage and embarks on the one-year journey that shapes the book. It feels like the ending of A Free Life is the beginning of EPL: what takes Ha Jin 600+ pages to reveal and Nan Wu more than a decade to achieve is already a “given” for the non-immigrant Liz Gilbert. Is this fair? Is this the equal opportunity that the American Dream has been glorifying? What made the difference between Nan Wu and Liz Gilbert? That’s the next theme I think of, identity.
I think of our identity: Immigrant, Visitor
Stay tuned.
