Royee Weng

In my project, I demonstrate the changing state of the American Dream by uncovering how ideals such as happiness and fulfillment have shifted over time and through generations. The future has never looked hazier, and as I gaze forward at what’s to come, I’ve wondered how it is that here in America—the land of the supposed “American Dream”—our collective identity has never felt more fragmented. The once-mainstream ideal of the American Dream has today become synonymous with systemic faults and incompetencies furthering the country’s divide, making it blindingly obvious that the systems and perceptions behind accessing the original so-called American Dream have long since expired. However, the American Dream is entirely a created construct, signifying that shifting or changing the way that that construct is perceived is entirely possible. And if the previously popularized American Dream was a construct that attempted to define and encapsulate the notion of happiness—through the obtainment of material goods and wealth, as well as economic mobility—then today’s reality reveals and affirms the sentiment that money truly cannot buy happiness. I document my own family’s American Dream alongside the history of what transpired during their immigrant journey to settle in the United States. I then explore attitudes and possibilities for how this new generation of young people might define and embody happiness in their lives as a way of (re-)discovering internal/external healing as well as uncovering the change in ideals, standards, and values toward acquiring a modern-day “Dream.”