Signs of Life in the U.S.A.

Identity  

As a young person in her twenties, I cannot even try to comprehend an answer to the question: "Who am I?". I think this is a pretty complicated question that demands an equally complicated answer, which I am not ready to give. So I'll try to keep it simple - I consider myself a good friend, caring daughter, loving girlfriend, hard-working student and an honest person. 

In his essay "American Dreams", Kevin Jennings describes his journey to answering the same question: "Who am I?" while growing up as a gay man in America and trying to achieve his own American Dream of becoming the president. He illustrates his torment of growing up as he couldn't express himself in front of anyone, especially his own bitter family full of prejudices. Kevin was determined to achieve the American Dream he imagined.  However, he completely lost himself in the process of achieving this goal - he lost any sign of his heritage and rejected his family. But the biggest price of his dream was trying to be something he was not, something he thought was "normal", trying to escape the fact that he was gay. When the truth hit him, he tried to commit suicide, as thought being a gay man denied him of his dream. His darkest moment taught him something - to embrace himself and take control of his destiny. This made him question a lot of things in the modern society: position of women, gay people, black people, poor people, and everyone else that didn't it into the "standard". In the end Jennings realized that by coming out of the closet and fighting for his freedom, he did achieve his American Dream, as he was doing exactly what he would have done if he became a president - fighting for "liberty and justice for all".