The word
"suburbia" never held that many meanings to me in my life. It is a place
where I grew up and where all of my favorite television shows were set in.
It was a place where everyone was happy, there were friends to play with
right next door, playgrounds, and just basically families interacting. I
had everything I needed at my fingertips and hardly ever needed to stray
far from my town for anything. Through this class, American Suburbia, I
have found that suburbia has not been around forever, that there is a
history behind it, and it has its share of problems also. Even though we
discussed a lot of negative things that I never knew existed in suburbia,
I still would not give my time there up for anything in this world.
In studying suburbia this
semester through literature, pictures, movies, and discussions, I feel
that I have gained a better understanding of what suburbia is to many
different people at many different times in history. When suburbia was
first introduced to me in historical terms, it was through "Bourgious
Utopia". This book enlightened me as to where the suburban ideals
originated and why they are still here today. The first suburbanites were
looking for a way to get away from the foul nature of the city in order to
have a better place to live and raise a family, which is why many people
go to suburbia today. Keep in mind though that the cities of "Bourgious
Utopia" were ten times worse than our cities today, but ours are not a
picnic either. We now escape crime
and filth while they were escaping disease, extreme filth and odors,
along with the general overcrowding where people were basically living
on top of one another. The suburbia of today tends to still resemble the
same ideas as to why it exists now as back then but just somewhat
different reasons for exiting the city. People now have any kind of
transportation that they need to get into the city for work or
shopping, which was not an option back then for they only had horses
and carriages. This was a major reason why a lot of people could not
relocate because they had no transportation to commute to the city.As we studied more about the
suburbias of the mid-twentieth century through "Goodbye Columbus",
"Avalon", and "A Raisin in the Sun", I started to understand more about
the problems suburbanites had to deal with in trying to make their dreams
of the suburban life come true. In "Goodbye Columbus", the Patimpkins had
reached the American dream of having the nice house in the nice
neighborhood and having enough money to live comfortably, but they were
not truly happy. Their kids disrepected them, there was no
communication, everything tended to revolve around money, and the family
was not in unity on anything. They basically had to sacrifice family
life for the suburban dream and they did not know how to get it back. I
feel that this probably happened a lot
in early suburbias because people were living in a different environment
with different ideals and dreams than they had ever had before. This
probably was a shock to their systems and the family life was what was
hurt in the process. "Avalon", in my eyes, was a great movie which
illustrated how the suburban dream can become a reality along with keeping
family together and happy, also. The Krichinsky family built its own
business and
prospered despite the fact that they were an immigrant family who had
to completely readjust to a new land. I think that it is great that
families can make themselves into something without anything to start with
except each other and stay together throughout it all. "A Raisin in the
Sun" was a movie which illustrated the problems that African Americans
had to face in the mid-twentieth century suburbia and I had no idea
existed. The Younger family
just wanted to get enough money together to get out of the city slums and
into a house in suburbia that they could call their own. They were not
asking for much, but to them it seemed like too much until the
life insurance
check from Lena's, the mother of the family, husband's death came in
and helped them over the hump and into suburbia. They were a family who
was just one paycheck away at all times from their dream home in suburbia.
The problem was that almost all of each paycheck went to the rent, food,
and other necessities of life for the family. When their suburban
home could
finally be within reach through the use of the insurance check,
their
dream started to become real, but a nightmare was just beginning. This
nightmare was called exclusion and they encountered it through the
all-white suburban area that they wanted to move into. Exclusion was a
key ingredient in suburbia then but it also is still apparent now. The
Youngers were a strong family and decided to live there despite the wishes
of their neighbors because they were not giving their dream up after they
had come this far for anybody. This story was one that showed me what
exclusion was all about and how it can affect a family's dream. I never
knew that exclusion could still flourish today, but it can be seen in
almost every suburbia in the nation right now.
Enjoy!
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