Sissy Eng stands out in direct contrast to her younger brother, having fully embraced the American Dream by marrying a white husband -- one who interestingly exoticizes Chinese people and culture -- and capitalizing on her Chinese heritage through the publication and sale of a cookbook, in which she takes enormous pride and pleasure. She, like her father though in a less subservient manner, fully caters to the American expectation of her Chinese identity, and uses it to make her own version of the American Dream. She is quite successful at this as well, and is entirely happy with the life she has created for herself as a staunch Chinese-American. Sissy does not exhibit any sense of guilt or conflict for having "sold-out," but rather accepts the largely artificial identity of her mixed culture or nationality as her natural place in the American systems of thinking and success.
Fred Eng is, in fact, the only of the Eng children that is actually in real conflict when it comes to the American Dream. His brother ignores it, his sister embraces it, and Fred rejects it...
Fred does not feel free to create his own identity in this country; unlike Johnny, he is not satisfied to be relegated to a tiny spot in the city, insulating himself, and unlike Sissy Fred is not willing to make his identity an artificial approximation of their expectations. he does this, of course, in his job as a tour guide and in his writing for Sissy's cookbook, but it tortures him in a way that Sissy does not really appreciate it. He cannot communicate with his father because his father has become too much of the stereotype projected on him by the tourists. His Chinese mother is also hugely disconnected from him not only through the practical circumstances of his life and upbringing, but because she is Chinese and Fred, for better or for worse, is an American.
Defining what these two terms -- Chinese and American -- mean is one of the primary tasks of the play. Or perhaps more correctly, the
play questions the definitions of Chinese and American, especially though Fred's own questioning of his identity and circumstances. His relation to the American Dream is the most complex of all the Eng children, because he does not see any clear definitions in the assumptions inherent to the proposition of this Dream. Instead, Fred sees only the nebulous and artificial creations of narrow human thinking and inherent prejudices. In this, he could be almost any immigrant at any time.
