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In her
second collection of short fiction, Pulitzer Prize winning
author Jhumpa Lahiri again explores the layered and emotionally
tangled lives of immigrants. Like her previous collection,
Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri settles in among transplants
from a culture rich in tradition and routine into a culture
that seems to celebrate the opposite.
The eight
stories in Unaccustomed Earth, however brief, are some
of the best so far this year. They're populated by complicated
relationships between father and daughter, brother and sister,
and an assortment of other characters who are growing up and
mostly struggling with their culture influencing who they
are becoming. Lahiri places a good deal of
weight on the emotional repercussions of breaking away, to
an extent, from tradition, inspired in part by Nathaniel Hawthorne's
argument in "The Custom-House" that "human nature will not
flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted,
for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out
soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far
as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth."
The first
section is comprised of five stories mostly from the perspective
of second generation children entering into or midway through
semi-independent lives. Lahiri crafts each story as if it
could continue eternally; the struggles her characters endure
are not uncommon, but with Lahiri's voice, they gather new
depth. In the title story, a young mother, Ruma, struggles
with the decision to invite her aging and recently widowed
father to live with her growing family. During a weeklong
visit, she becomes witness to the new, independent life her
father has embraced and his reluctance to become a burden
for her.
Like
her previous efforts, Lahiri's real genius is in marrying
seemingly minor details with the larger picture. In "Hell
Heaven," a young woman reflects on her mother's painful sacrifices
during her childhood after she realizes, years later, that
her mother was in love with a grad student who lived with
their family temporarily. The story doesn't refer to specific
sacrifices and instead focuses on the narrator as a child
as she observes her mother's interaction with the young man,
and throughout the years as he marries, has children, and
moves away, all but shutting the mother out of his life. Similarly,
in "A Choice of Accommodations," Amit, who is married with
children, makes plans to attend the wedding of an old high
school crush. Confronted with the bitter nostalgia of his
youth, Amit finds himself stuck somewhere between his adult
life and the awkwardness of his younger years, showing clearly
how Lahiri transforms a story that could easily have been
mundane into an intriguing reflection on adult life.
In the
second section, Lahiri presents the trilogy of "Hema and Kaushik"—three
heavy stories that are strong enough to stand alone but are
simply powerful together. The first story, "Once In A Lifetime"
is a captivating first-person narrative and a sort of love
note from a young girl, Hema, regarding Kaushik, the young
son of her parents' friends who come to live with her family
when she is 13 years old. The subsequent story, "Year's End"
picks up several years from where Hema's story ended, and
from Kaushik's perspective as he struggles through his college
days, trying to figure out where he belongs. This particular
trio is the essence of Unaccustomed Earth; combining
universal themes of cultural duality and detachedness in a
way that is gently empathetic to each character. In the final
story, "Going Ashore," Hema and Kaushik are nearing 40 and
meet again at a small party in Rome. As they reconnect, it
is not difficult to feel equally entangled in their lives;
their individual selves are fully realized during the course
of the stories' progression, a unique quality that endears
more than it distracts.
Besides
a few Bengali words, semi-annual trips to India and the occasional
reference to traditional foods, there is little about this
collection that is inherently Indian. These are the stories
of everyday people with common vices, and even their sometimes
strange quick fixes to those problems don't seem too extravagant
to actually happen. Many of the stories reflect on the past,
usually to a specific series of events or turning points in
the characters' lives when they become aware of the disconnect
between their lives and those of their parents; most seem
to be relieved to embrace their own identity but harbor at
least some regret for the cultural identity they are, to a
degree, leaving behind. Unaccustomed Earth may not
be a revelation, but it falls directly in line with Lahiri's
previous works, as if the characters grow on their own, without
Lahiri directing the rise and fall of their narrative.
(May,
2008)
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