Defining what it means to be an American has been a matter of discussion among Americans from the country’s earliest days. Many of these efforts at looking inward, however, have a way of spinning outward to engage the rest of the world in a kind of dialogue. In his famous 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson defines this virtue in opposition to the past, especially the European past. “Insist on yourself,” Emerson said. “Never imitate.”

 

One can see something of the same sensibility in the essays that follow in this section called “My America.” We invited five young writers from around the United States—of varying backgrounds, occupations, marital status—to write about what they thought was important to tell international readers of their own age about this country. These essays, we thought, could provide a deeper, fuller picture of the USA and its people than may be conveyed through Hollywood movies or international TV news.

 

Many of these essays do begin by looking inward and then move on to consider the world. Jacqueline Morais Easley, a naturalized U.S. citizen, marvels at the diverse families that live on her block and explains her reasons for treasuring the way her daughter colors outside the lines. Korey London, an ex-serviceman, tells why he believes in defending this country. Ashley Moore, a magazine editor in New York City, far from her Texas home on her first job out of college, reflects that her small apartment and empty refrigerator are a long way from the American dream. Eboo Patel, the Muslim head of an interfaith council in Chicago, tells why he thinks his religion and America’s tradition of tolerance reinforce each other.

 

Kelly McWilliams, a college freshman who is well aware of what a fellow essayist calls “the tragic, terrible parts of American history,” explains her motives for choosing to live in this constantly self-correcting land. She takes Frederick Douglass, the former slave who became the country’s leading abolitionist, as her model, pointing out that Douglass made the decision to stay in the United States and wage an internal political struggle against slavery. “America can be made and re-made to fit its people,” this 18-year-old writes. “It is willing. It is waiting. And for as long as this remains true, I will be American.”