2026 Spring Read: Looking Forward
by Lauren Pronger
Hello listeners, this is Lauren Pronger from Amarillo, TX for my final Radio Readers BookByte on Shing Yin Khor’s graphic novel The American Dream? for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. Today I’ll be continuing my look at the American Dream, the phrase and ethos itself as it’s depicted in the book of the same name, and what the book might tell us about the broader concept.
It took me a lot longer than it should’ve to realize that the title of Khor’s graphic novel, with its question mark, is ambiguous. It could be referring to what we immediately think of as the quintessential “American Dream,” an immigrant success story like Khor coming to the US as a teenager and becoming an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and investigating where they fit into that ideal. Or it could be referring to Route 66 as the American Dream, or in other words, Route 66 as the dream of America.
In a quick five-page segment, Khor looks at both of these options. After illustrating an instance of anti-immigrant racism, they take the opportunity to briefly digress on the subject of Indian American owned hotels and how they seem like the quintessential “American Dream” story. Khor’s anger at the subtle xenophobia boils over on the next page where they shout, “what makes you think we even want…these bits and discards and ruins of your stupid American Dream!?” Placed against a background (literally, this is a graphic novel) of ghost town Glenrio, TX, this outburst feels like they could be calling the ruins of Route 66 itself a broken American Dream, particularly apt in this abandoned and dilapidated section.
There’s a lot to unpack about the concept of “the American Dream.” It’s a very “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” idea. That America offers so much opportunity and social or financial mobility that anyone can make something of themselves if we just try hard enough. Of course, most of us know at this point that the “American Dream” success story is in fact a myth. America, just like anywhere else, has its fair share of systemic problems that make upward mobility nearly impossible without a whole lot of luck. Success stories do happen of course, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule, and that’s what makes them exceptional!
So, I found it fascinating to apply this contested concept to Route 66 itself. It was a success story…until it wasn’t. It fell to the wayside and had sections removed and built over as the Interstate Highway System came into play. But just two years after decommission, there were already associations popping up to preserve it. The success story had once again become the underdog, fighting to survive, and if there’s anything America likes to root for, it’s an underdog. But what of the people America has never embraced? Does this national symbol also represent their version of America? Four of the eight Route 66 states criminalize lifesaving healthcare, two of the states held Internment Camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, and an ICE detention center is currently located directly on the Arizona portion of the highway. Yet, many immigrants have also made the highway their home like Kumar Patel who’s introduced in Khor’s novel as one of the many Indian American hotel owners and who’s passionate about preserving the historic Route 66 Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino, one of only two left along the highway. The Americana culture of Route 66 so often weaponized against outsiders is also the product of migrants who’ve made their homes here.
So instead of seeing Route 66 solely as an exclusionary marker of our past, I propose that we look at both its past and present to see how it informs our future. Instead of chasing the bygone “golden age” of Historic Route 66, we should use the history of the highway - its status as a migrant highway, its proximity to violence against those not considered American “enough” - to understand the mistakes we’ve made as a country and ensure we don’t repeat them again. We should look at how today’s increased diversity of the highway is a microcosm of the larger diversity of our nation, and how it has revitalized this national phenomenon. That diversity is our strength and the sooner we embrace that complexity and strive to move forward, informed by the pitfalls of our past, rather than blindly back, the better our future will be.
This is Lauren Pronger from Amarillo, TX for the HPPR Radio Readers.
