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Jenny's Freedom

 “I wanted to be free to be selfish and self-destructive and indulgent like the white girls at the high school my parents worked so hard to get me into, and once they did, once we moved into a neighborhood where no one hung out on the streets, where everyone was the same pasty shade of consumptive blotchy paleness, all it did was make me want to get away from my family. I envied white girls whose relationships with their parents were so abysmal that they could never disappoint them” (Zhang 154-5).
Jenny’s response here to the big changes in her life, her little brother being born, moving to a suburban neighborhood and switching to a majority upper-middle class white school, highlights the contradiction of her parent’s hopes. They want the best for her, but they don’t entirely fit the white suburbanite mold of “parents”. Even though they’re often away from home, Jenny still feels repressed by the expectations they hold. 
Not only is this a story of the conflict between first generation immigrants and their children, it’s also a story about the noveau riche. Having made it in America, Jenny’s parents know what real struggle is like. However, they are extremely reluctant in letting her be independent to the point that their worry comes off as treating her as a child. And although they’ve moved into the suburbs, they don’t have the same privilege the white suburbanites do. They can’t put aside their worries for their children, nor do they want to.
Jenny is jealous of the privileges the white girls have because she feels out of place. Thus, she doesn’t realize what she has until it’s too late and she’s gotten what she’s wanted, the freedom she sought out.

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