In this book, the author paints a vivid portrait of one family's experience of becoming American. Full of conflicts and challenges, possibilities and pitfalls, the process is complicated, taking place over the course of many years. It is unclear exactly when the process begins or is finally achieved, if it can accurately be characterized as ever being finally achieved or if it always remains a process of becoming, a more or less, depending on context. In the novel, it is citizenship that is characterized as cut and dried – you pass the test and you get the title. While this legal status view is probably the most common understanding of what it means to be a citizen in America, the packet readings offer a more complex, involved view. The contrast makes it clear that being an American and being an American citizen can and often do have strikingly different, and in some cases even contradictory, meanings.
             What does it mean to be an American? The Ku Klux Klan obviously holds a definition in stark contrast to that of the NAACP. The House Committee on Un-American Activities had an understanding certainly at odds with the ACLU, and the Constitution itself. Given our diversity and our not always so liberal past, or present for that matter, any number of definitions could be offered. One of the most inclusive, and powerful, is based on an aspiration – the desire to realize the American dream. This, in large part, is the definition running through Average American.
             The American dream is based largely on what you have – a spouse and 3.2 children, a good job – and what you own – a nice car, a home in the suburbs, and if you are really fortunate, your own business. It is also based on what these things can provide – security and independence in both the short- and long-term, and the prospect that your children will do even better.
             It is to this that the Wang family aspires, along wi
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