In Into The Wild and The Accidental Asian, authors Jon Krakauer and Eric Liu respectively provide us with stories of young men in search of an alternative to contemporary society. In Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer provides an account of the journey into the wilderness of a young man named Christopher McCandless. McCandless is a graduate of Emory College, who after graduation abandons all material possessions and hitchhikes his way to Alaska. McCandless changes his name to Alex Supertramp, gives his savings of $25,000 away to charity, burns the belongings in his wallet, and abandons his car, family, and friends. He walks into the wilderness north of Mount McKinley and is found dead from starvation by a hunter four months later, inside an abandoned bus. Eric LiuÆs The Accidental Asian provides LiuÆs own account of his attempt to assimilate into American, i.e., White, society as a second generation Asian. In both of these stories we see that contemporary society both shackles and constrains these two young men. In the case of Supertramp, his journey ends in failure and death. In the case of Liu, his efforts to assimilate still leave him with a number of questions about the nature of race and ethnicity and the way in which American society narrowly defines them.
Eric Liu is an American success. He is a graduate of Yale University, won numerous awards for his abilities in science, wrote speeches for President Clinton and attended Harvard School of Law. However, Liu is not white. As an Asian American, his achievements often represented just one more way for white Americans to view him in stereotypes reserved for Asians. For example, he attempted to be a ôRenaissanceö man in high school, thinking that if he excelled in wrestling, academics, and edited the school newspaper he would somehow fit in with Americans (Liu, p. 43). Unfortunately, this only made him fit into the stereotype of Asians as over-achievers, but Liu cannot...