Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conslusion
References

Introduction

“Unaccustomed Earth” is a book that is brought about by a collection of eight short stories which evolves around the apparent of immigration of Bengali to America. The stories tend to explore the delicate issues of cultural diversity and cultural assimilation of the characters in the stories which she shares up to the present (Chotiner, 2008). The eight short stories featured in the book are “Unaccustomed Earth”, “Hell – Heaven”, “A Choice of Accommodations”, “Only Goodness”, “Nobody’s Business”, and finally, the trilogy featuring the life of Hema and Kaushik (the titles underlying the trilogy attributed to the two characters are Once in a Lifetime, Year’s End, Going Ashore) (Sawhney, 2008).

Jhumpa Lahiri, the author of the book, is a Bengali who was born in London by parents who emigrated from India. She spent her early years in Rhode Island, USA. She attended Barnard College, and thereafter studied at Boston University to achieve three Master’s Degrees (English, Creative Writing, and Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts) and a Doctor’s Degree in Renaissance Studies. Currently at 40 years old, she married in 2001 and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children (Chotiner, 2008).

Lahiri is also the writer of two other famous crafts, the “Interpreter of Maladies” (which had her earn a Pulitzer Prize in the year of 2000) and “The Namesake” (which was made into a film by Mira Nair, an Indian film director-producer). These pieces also attempted to explore deeper the issues of cultural diversity and immigration. As a writer, she looks up to Chekhov, Hardy, William Trevor, and Alice Munro (Kachka, 2008).

Discussion

The characters

In first story of the collection, the characters of “Unaccustomed Earth” are Ruma, a Bengali-American lawyer who was just starting to follow the path of live her mother had lived; Ruma’s father, who is in his old age with a dilemma of living alone or living along with his daughter whom he feels he might have conflicts with; Ruma’s husband, who was described to be workaholic; and Ruma’s son, the boy whom his father is starting to build a good relationship with (Schillinger, 2008).

In the second story “Hell – Heaven”, the characters are Usha, the narrator of the short story who was retelling the heartaches and heartbreaks of her mother; Usha’s mother, who lived a life bearing an unrequited love by the man she pursues; Pranab Kaku, the young man who is an uncle to Usha and a brother-in-law to Usha’s mother, whom her mother falls in love with; and Deborah, whom Pranab Kaku married and, eventually, divorced (Lahiri, 2008).

In “A Choice of Accommodations”, the characters are Amit, the man who has been married for eight years to Megan (Fugard, 2008).

In “Only Goodness”, the characters are Sudha, the sister to the alcoholic Rahul (Wear, 2008).

“Nobody’s Business” features the characters Paul, the American graduate student and Sang, the Bengali-American who was troubles with choosing an eligible fiancée.

In the trilogy of the collection of short stories (Once in a Lifetime, Year’s End and Going Ashore), the story was about the characters Hema and Kaushik and their ordeals (Schillinger, 2008)

The brief overview

The story “Unaccustomed Earth” is about the growing tension between Ruma and her father, which started when the latter decided to visit his daughter in her home in Seattle, whom she lives at along with her husband who was described as workaholic, and her son who was completely American in culture and all his actions. Ruma decided to live in the suburbs of Seattle and still in grief out of the death of her mother, who died due to a reaction to anesthesia. Now living a settled life of staying home to spend a full-time supervision to her son and the household rooted to deciding to move in a foreign homeland, her widower father started to build a harmonious relationship with his grand son—sowing seeds and playing around (Schillinger, 2008) like they’ve been together for a long time. The conflict is yet to be revealed as Ruma’s father is clueless if he will reveal his romance with a Bengali lady to his daughter—a twist that might heighten the gap between the father and the daughter who have been separated for a long time (Sawhney, 2008).

In “Hell – Heaven”, the story is about Usha retelling her mother’s ordeal regarding an unrequited love by the latter’s brother-in-law, Pranab Kaku. During the early part of the story, it looked like Pranab had no eyes for the American women, yet during the middle part of the story, it turned out that Pranab pursued a woman, Deborah, who was from his same league. In the end, Usha traced a pattern in the lives of Bengali people who spends their lives in a foreign country: wasted by love and unfamiliar to their original roots (Lahiri, 2008).

In “A Choice of Accommodations”, the story surrounds an occasion, when Amit decided to go off to a romantic getaway weekend with his wife Megan, to the wedding of Amit’s old prep school crush. On the night of the wedding, there occurred the event when Amit finally confessed to Megan his intimate feelings for the bride. This angered Megan, yet the confession brought the couple to a steamy love making at a dorm room on the following morning of the wedding (Fugard, 2008).

In “Only Goodness”, the story retells how it all started to Rahul: he had his first shot at his alcoholism back in high school. This further continued until his college, and thereafter he stopped studying at his college. Years after, when he was already coping with his disorder, he decided to take a visit to his sister who was living in London. Yet everything turned out the worst, when he accidentally left Sudha’s baby in the bath tub when he fell asleep as he was too drunk to look over the baby (Wear, 2008).

In “Nobody’s Business”, Paul, an American graduate student was unromantically involved to his roommate Sang, a Bengali-American lady, who confides with him her troubles of choosing an eligible fiancée among the men pursuing her (Schillinger, 2008).

In the final three stories of the collection about Hema and Kaushik, the story “Once in a Lifetime” started off when these two were still in their adolescence. Kaushik and his family went back to Cambridge, Massachusetts after spending seven years in India. In “Year’s End”, the story surrounded the death of Kaushik’s mother, his father’s quest and then marriage to Chitra, and then the building of a family of the new couple (Schillinger, 2008). In the last story in the trilogy, “Going Ashore”, where Hema and Kaushik are now career-oriented people, with Hema working as a Latin Professor and Kaushik as a photographer of war, they crossed each other’s paths in Italy (Fugard, 2008).

The Analysis

Lahiri attempts to explore the complicated world of culture and its issues on her collection of short stories in “Unaccustomed Earth”.

In “Unaccustomed Earth”, the tension was brought about by the long loss of communication of Ruma and her father. It even became harder for them because, during the times when both of them should have been comforting each other to alleviate the pain caused by the death of Ruma’s mother, they were too “far” from one other to understand each other’s feelings. When Ruma’s father was busy with his career in Pennsylvania and Ruma with her career as a wife and mother, their ability to communicate with each other was further inhibited. The first story tells us so much about cultural differences. With Ruma’s father still embracing Indian culture and her embracing American culture, they were no longer able to live up to each other’s each other’s expectations. This is indeed a great pain in the part of the father, because now that he’s old, he needs the presence of a family and, usually, the joy brought about by the youngest person in the family. Yet Ruma’s prohibition of his father’s enjoyment by untowardly telling him that she doesn’t want him to move in with the family is actually building another gap between the two of them.

In “Hell-Heaven”, it’s another loss of communication, now between a mother and a daughter who apparently are living together. Told in the first person point of view, Lahiri tends to let us perceive the feelings of Usha, who most likely isn’t getting the sympathy of the readers if not told on the mentioned point of view, since her mother is the one who is experiencing unrequited love by Pranab. Due to her mother’s desperate intent of having Pranab fall in love with her, Usha takes a rebellion as she acts differently from the rest of the girls from their culture—she was independent, bold and in impulsive in her behaviors, usually towards men. Usha obviously disproved her mother’s behavior. The story now surrounds the issue of looking at a family member get devastated by not being loved by the person he/she pursues. In the story, it was obvious that the feelings of Usha’s mother toward Pranab are the same as the latter’s feelings for Deborah. In the end, when Usha was telling about her own heartache, she partly blames her mother as cultures started to clash.

In “A Choice of Accommodations”, the eight long years of the marriage of Amit and Megan seemed like a big pretention that their companionship was going elsewhere romantic, leading to a happy ending like the usual fairy tales. This part of the collection tells so much about the importance of selecting the times when we should be honest, because if we’d look deeper in the story, it seemed like Amit’s honesty brought their marriage to an end.

In “Only Goodness”, the family deals with a disorder that is capable of costing some important people’s lives. It is obvious that Sudha, who was a successful woman in London, was brought up differently from Rahul, who until now is partly depending on others without a relatively stable job to resource a good living from. Alcoholism is a serious issue; it’s neither just another habit nor just another vice. When taken in excess, alcohol could bring about many illnesses (Goodwin, 2000). That’s why Rahul’s and Sudha’s families looked at his disorder a problem that needs to be attended to. However, their support wasn’t as evident as readers thought it should be. With this, we could conclude that Rahul never got well even if he was so determined to have better health as he doesn’t have a very strong group which his family should have provided.

In “Nobody’s Business”, the short story was basically entitled as such because it surrounded the events when Paul was giving Sang his opinions about the latter’s series of marriage proposals. With this, we could see the culture clashes again—now obviously between the American and Indian cultures. It is still common for the Indians to consider parents’, and all of marriage’s aspects in choosing the person to marry, and Americans don’t seem to pay much attention to these. That’s why it was obvious that Paul didn’t know what Sang really wanted, and if he has some selfish reasons of meddling with Sang’s decision is still unrevealed.

In the trilogy of the collection, the way of speaking directly to the reader is an intelligent manner of the writer to explicitly tell the readers what she wants them to perceive. Since in this manner, the characters were known better, it wasn’t difficult relating to their experiences and emotions. This was particularly evident in the account of Kaushik about his mother’s death, his father’s quest and then finally marriage to a woman he doesn’t like, and even his feelings over the new members of the family. Overall, the preparation of the first two stories of the trilogy for “Going Ashore” was timely and appropriate. It had vividly established Hema’s (1^st story) and Kaushik’s (2^nd story) personalities that it wasn’t hard to love them until the end of the trilogy.

Conslusion

All in all, Lahiri was successful in depicting lives showcasing the issues of cultural diversion and assimilation, acceptance and individual search for the self. All the stories had their respective roles in letting the readers understand the importance of embracing one’s own culture and yet being open to changes brought about by possible adaptation of other cultures.

In the end, it is important to be patriotic at heart. Even if we decide to immigrate somewhere else for our own respective reasons, loyalty to where you hailed from is the single most important virtue that we have to remember before incorporating another culture in our lives. Ethnocentrism (indifference to other culture) is different from patriotism (support of the country); the same way that xenocentrism (indifference to own culture) isn’t the same as nationalism (devotion to one’s nation) (Encarta, 2007).

Respect to one’s own and other cultures is the key to live hesitance-free.

References

Chotiner, Isaac. “Jhumpa Lahiri”. The Atlantic. 2008. Web.

Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition]. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2007. Web.

Fugard, Lisa. “Divided we love: First-generation Indian Americans cope with life in the U.S. and differences with their immigrant parents”. Los Angeles Times. 2008. Web.

Goodwin, Donald. “Alcoholism: The Facts” Oxford University Press. 2000.

Kachka, Boris. “The Confidence Artist: Jhumpa Lahiri isn’t afraid to provoke tears, or calls of déjà vu“. New York Books. 2008. Web.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Hell-Heaven”. The New Yorker. 2008. Web.

Sawhney, Hirsh. “No place like home: Hirsh Sawhney hears echoes of Salinger in Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of migrant tales, Unaccustomed Earth”. 2008. Web.

Schillinger, Liesl. “American Children”. Sunday Book Review. 2008. Web.

Wear, Delese. “Lahiri, Jhumpa: Only Goodness”. Literature Annotations. 2008. Web.

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