Dream Builders, Dream Killers

Book excerpt: All immigrants to America have a story with the American Dream, a story sometimes intimately intertwined with personal dreams. My story might be a surprising, if not maybe an unexpected one diverging from the usual account of pitiful existence in Haiti's slums or that of struggle for adaptation to America's way of life by one of Haiti's "boat people" who landed on South Florida's coast. It is a story that starts from the lower plains of the Artibonite Valley in Haiti with a dream from my great grandfather, Joizil Estimé, and continues in the United States, ultimately in Powell, Ohio. It is the story of a Haitian immigrant born in the small coastal town of Saint-Marc, Haiti. It evolves with my experiences growing up in my native country where my formative years were influenced by a connection to a diverse sociocultural environment. It progresses with my interaction with other societal enclaves in foreign lands like Germany and ultimately in the United States. It is an account of dreams fulfilled or unfulfilled, due not only to factors such as the convergence of different motivational agents (dreambuilders), the winds blowing on corporate America, whether in Haiti or the United States, but also to different conditions such as country of origin, globalization, social class, and Afro-ethnicity in America (dreamkillers). It is the story of coping with life changes, of integration into the American mainstream, of successes and disappointments of an immigrant from Haiti. But it is more than the story of an immigrant; it also reflects in a way the struggle of all immigrants coping with the pursuit of the American Dream and the quest for adaptation and continuous learning. It relates to all those who have wrestled with their dreams, those who have learned to make the best out of life's circumstances and keep a positive outlook in the era we live in. Dreambuilders, dreamkillers are in all walks of life.