Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2008
Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories told from the perspective of different characters, all of Indian origin carving out their lives in the US. The first part of the book is a collection of five different stories, all relating the varying experiences; from the parents - arriving in the US to a world wholly different to what they know; to their children- born in the US to Indian parents, and struggling with their own identities and the juxtaposition of their origins and their citizenship.
The second part of the book is the story of Hema, a young Bengali girl growing up in the US, and Kaushik, who spends part of his childhood in the US and the other in India. Theirs is a love story that spans from the US across to Europe, India, and finally ends in Thailand. It is a story of two young people who are brought together by childhood circumstances - Hema's parents are Indian immigrants who have already settled in the US when Kaushik's parents move there from India. The friendship between the two families is that of circumstance - families brought together in a foreign country by the commonality of their origin; the class differences, although largely ignored by the families as they become a part of the larger Bengali community, forms a subtle background to their story. Both points of view are written retrospectively by Hema and Kaushik, eventually leading to their meeting as adults years later.
The overriding theme in the stories - in both parts of the book- is of families coming together to create a sense of community in their new country.
As with most writing by Lahiri, the perspective is always that of people dealing with the displacement that comes from migration and the uprooting of lives. I can never resist these kind of tales. Similar to her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, her writing in Unaccustomed Earth is as equally subtle and quietly observant.
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