This is my response to a quote taken from Pico Iyer’s essay, “Where Worlds Collide”.
In his essay, “Where Worlds Collide,” travel writer Pico Iyer notes that immigrants “may not be pleased to realize that the America they’ve dreamed of is, in fact, a land of tacos and pita and pad thai,” 1 suggesting that the so called ‘American Dream’ is merely just an illusion, while highlighting the difference between their expectations and reality.
He describes the outcome of people from different cultures encountering each other for the first time in the airport, by expressing their apprehensiveness of each other and points out their disappointment that America is “full, indeed, of the very Third World cultures that other Third Worlders look down upon.” 2 This links to the idea that immigrants come to America to get away from these Third World countries to achieve the American Dream, only to realize that it is not as simple as they thought it would be and serves as a reminder of the diversity that can be experienced in an airport.
