American Dream and Dreams Deferred

Carlton D. Floyd is associate professor of English, affiliated faculty in women’s and gender studies, a former associate provost for inclusion and diversity, and cofounder of the Center for Inclusion and Diversity at the University of San Diego.Thomas Ehrlich Reifer is professor of sociology and affiliated faculty in Asian studies, ethnic studies, and Latin American studies at the University of San Diego, an associate fellow of the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), and an official Freedom Writers teacher.

“Carlton D. Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer offer an impressive, well-researched, and much-needed critique of the American Dream. Asking us to consider the dreams that have been and continue to be deferred, Floyd and Reifer place popular narratives of the American Dream in dialectical relationship with marginalized narratives to explore the chasm between the Dream and the nation’s stark historical realities. While they acknowledge that dreams are crucial in the making of collective memory and a sense of peoplehood, they also demonstrate that we need to be careful of what we dream, since dreams that lack truth, such as the American Dream and its ever-changing forms, often divide humanity into deadly rivalries. Given the relational processes of exploitation and exclusion that define our current moment, The American Dream and Dreams Deferred: A Dialectical Fairy Tale is a must read for anyone interested in creating a future that is absent of such processes.”

• Chapter 1: The American Dream and Dreams of the AmericasChapter 2: Embattled Dreams, Memory, and the American IliadChapter 3: What Happens to a Dream Deferred?Chapter 4: Another California, Another Country, Another World?Chapter 5: The Beautiful Dreams and Nightmares that America Bears