In Jhumpa Lahiri’s book Unaccustomed Earth there are many short stories which describe the challenge of immigrant families in America as they navigate their old and new cultures in terms of their own identity. There is a sense of displacement felt by the initial immigrant generation which continues to impact their American-born children, who must accommodate the older generation and sacrifice connections to heritage while facing complex cultural challenges. This displacement presents itself as a bond between generations, who each approach the challenge in different ways. In their interactions with one another, their traditions, and their new American home the bonds ensure that individual disconnection does not threaten the greater bond between these families and both Bengali tradition and American realities.
Accommodating the older generation
In the title story of this collection there are three generations who must accommodate one another: Akash must accommodate his mother Ruma, and Ruma must accommodate her Bengali father. Akash was born in New York, and raised in America by two professional parents. Ruma, on the other hand, was raised in Pennsylvania by immigrant parents. After Ruma’s mother passes away, her father travels, sees the world, and even meets a lady friend, a fellow Bengali who spent her career in America, Meenakshi. Despite living in a Western context for decades, neither Ruma nor her father want to acknowledge this behavior of finding a girlfriend, as it is in opposition to traditions which they have ostensibly brought with them from South East Asia. Ruma must accommodate her father by not acknowledging it. Akash, on the other hand, accommodates the need of both his mother and grandfather to remain connected to the traditions to which they have such a complicated relationship by becoming interested in them, rather than embarrassed by them or embarrassed by not living within them. Akash is young and innocent of such things, as is revealed in the following passage:
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“What color is it?” Her father asked.
“Red.”
“And in Bengali?”
“Lal.”
“Good.”
“And neel!” Akash cried, pointing to the sky (Lahiri, “Unaccustomed Earth”).
Sudha, in the story “Only Goodness”, accommodates her parents by internalizing their values and respecting her traditional place as daughter within the family, despite some rebellion in her teenage years. She is therefore very frustrated and emotional when her parents fail to acknowledge their Bengali values which she herself has internalized, including the concept that her brother should not disrespect his family but also that her parents have an obligation to express their displeasure to him.
Sacrificing connections to heritage
The first American generation, in Lahiri’s collection, must sacrifice many of their connections to their heritage in order to fit in with American society and peers. Ruma fails to want to teach her son her maternal tongue; Sudha is frustrated by her parents inability to reinforce their traditions in relation to the behavior of her brother Rahul; and in “Hell-Heaven” Pranab is initially pulled to Aparna out of homesickness for India, and Aparna returns these emotions with a sort of romantic love based on how it would fulfill the cultural ideas of the right sort of relationship.
Ruma, in the title story, learned to speak Bengali growing up in Pennsylvania, however she finds the process of trying to teach her son Akash to speak it to be tiresome and possibly not useful. Lahiri describes how Ruma had tried when Akash was younger, but she had quickly given up on it. When her father returns from his travels to visit Ruma and her son in Seattle, Akash, through the innocence of not yet knowing the complexity of the cultural challenges faced by his older relatives, immediately reaches out to his grandfather to better learn the language and experience Bengali traditions. In this story, while Ruma has made this sacrifice, her son reconnects through the immigrant generation, showing how the individual challenges and sacrifices, when viewed from the family and its bonds as a whole, is not nearly as disconnected as any individual within it might feel.
In the story “Only Goodness” Sudha blames herself for her brother Rahul’s alcoholism, which is becomes an embarrassment and major contributor to his disconnection from his family and his traditions. It was Sudha who first asked her brother to buy alcohol when she was underage, an American teenage custom which would have been viewed very negatively by her parents. Rahul slowly sinks into regular dilemmas and problems due to his drunkenness. Sudha is positioned between her brother’s actions, her contribution to his actions, and her parents’ expectations, however she is frustrated by her parent’s denial of Rahul’s rejection of their values.
Sudha shut her eyes, thinking that she might cry. All this time she had been waiting for her parents to acknowledge Rahul’s drinking, but hearing her father say it now after what just happened, was too much. (Lahiri, “Only Goodness”).
In “Hell-Heaven” Aparna feels decades of resentment after both she and Pranab, whom she meets when he is a graduate student at MIT, begin a platonic relationship based on their mutual shared cultural connection. She fails to meet the romantic standard that was set for as a cultural ideal when Pranab marries a woman who does not share his heritage. Aparna eventually realizes that her love was based on expectations and the pull of her Bengali culture, rather than the romantic love which is idealized in American society, and in so doing she gives up that cultural connection. Aparna also attempts to relay the importance of this to her daughter, so that she won’t make a similar mistake.
In sacrificing the connection their heritage, these characters face increasingly complex challenges as the opposing sets of values have been internalized.
Increasingly complex challenges
The challenges faced by the first born generation in America is more complex than that faced by their immigrant parents or their Western children as they have dual expectations which are sometimes contradictory. On one hand their immigrant parents came to America to provide their children with a better life; on the other, the parents brought with them traditions and values which become a tension in the context of American societal expectations.
Sudha’s challenge with Rahul is more complex than that of her parents because there are two different societal worldviews with somewhat conflicting analysis. On one hand Sudha could speak to her brother and express this displeasure herself, as is permitted in American society. On the other, as the daughter it is her parent’s responsibility to hold and reinforce the traditions which she does not feel fully connected to.
Conclusion
The characters in the short stories of Lahiri’s book The Unaccustomed Earth each must deal with the challenge of remaining connected to their culture while living their daily lives in a society which does not reinforce their traditions. It is a complex interaction and bond, as the individuals’ feels both pulled to their traditions, even those that they know only through a previous generation, while also being exposed to and incorporating the general values of everyday American society. The bonds between the family members are complex, but through their bonds with each other their bonds with their ancestral past remain. Therein lays the complexity and challenge, but also richness in their experience.
