Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth (2008) explores the complexities of diasporic identity, generational divides, and the struggle to reconcile cultural heritage with personal reinvention. The titular story, Unaccustomed Earth, follows Ruma, a second-generation Bengali-American woman, and her aging father, who has recently lost his wife and begun traveling the world. Through their strained yet tender relationship, Lahiri examines themes of displacement, memory, and the shifting dynamics of family in the diaspora.
This essay will analyze the story through the lens of Salman Rushdie’s concept of “imaginary homelands”—the idea that migrants reconstruct their pasts through fragmented, idealized memories rather than lived realities. We will explore:
The diasporic father’s reinvention – How Ruma’s father uses travel to escape grief and redefine himself.
Ruma’s struggle with cultural inheritance – Her ambivalence toward tradition and her mother’s legacy.
The garden as a metaphor for diasporic identity – A space of temporary belonging that cannot fully take root.
The postcard as a symbol of hidden lives – The father’s secret relationship and the impossibility of full disclosure in diaspora.
1. The Diasporic Father’s Reinvention
Ruma’s father embodies the “unhomely” migrant—a man who, after decades in America, still feels neither fully American nor Bengali. His wife’s death fractures his already tenuous sense of belonging, leading him to seek solace in travel.
Escape from Grief:
His European tours are a form of self-reinvention, a way to avoid confronting his wife’s absence.
Unlike Ruma, who clings to memory, he refuses nostalgia—his postcards are impersonal, devoid of emotion.
A New Romance:
His relationship with Mrs. Bagchi represents a late-life rebellion against traditional expectations.
Unlike his arranged marriage, this relationship is chosen, free from duty—yet he hides it, knowing Ruma would disapprove.
“He would have preferred to tell Romi. He would have absorbed the information casually, might even have found it a relief. Ruma was different. All his life he’d felt condemned by her, on his wife’s behalf.”
His secrecy mirrors the silences common in immigrant families—emotions unspoken, truths deferred.
2. Ruma’s Struggle with Cultural Inheritance
Ruma, unlike her father, is tethered to the past. Her mother’s death leaves her unmoored, and her move to Seattle isolates her further.
Failed Assimilation:
She abandons her legal career, becoming a stay-at-home mother—a role her feminist, career-driven mother would have questioned.
She loses her Bengali, just as her son loses it—a linguistic rupture symbolizing generational erosion.
The Ghost of Her Mother:
She idealizes her mother’s domesticity, yet resents the expectations it imposed.
Her father’s independence threatens her—if he moves on, what does that mean for her grief?
“With the birth of Akash… she had felt awe for the first time in her life. But death, too, had the power to awe… that a human being could be alive for years and years… and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible.”
Her father’s refusal to live with her forces her to confront her own loneliness—she is neither the daughter her mother wanted nor the mother she imagined she’d be.
3. The Garden: A Metaphor for Diasporic Belonging
The garden her father plants is a transient gift—something beautiful but unsustainable, much like diasporic identity.
Temporary Roots:
He knows Ruma won’t maintain it—just as he knows he cannot stay.
The hydrangea, his wife’s favorite flower, is a gesture of remembrance, but it will bloom in colors he’ll never see.
Akash’s “Garden” of Buried Toys:
The child’s playful burial of objects mirrors the futility of preserving culture in a foreign land.
Like his grandfather’s Bengali lessons, these fragments will be forgotten or outgrown.
“It was a futile exercise, he knew. He could not picture his daughter or her husband caring for it properly… In weeks, he guessed, it would be overgrown with weeds.”
The garden, like diaspora itself, is an act of hope—but one that acknowledges its own impermanence.
4. The Postcard: The Diaspora’s Hidden Lives
The discovered postcard to Mrs. Bagchi shatters Ruma’s illusions about her father’s grief.
A Secret Self:
The Bengali script excludes Ruma, just as her father’s new life excludes her.
His relationship is a private reinvention, one that defies the immigrant narrative of eternal mourning.
Ruma’s Decision to Mail It:
By sending the postcard, she releases her father from her expectations.
She accepts that diasporic lives are palimpsests—layered with hidden stories, unspoken desires.
“She turned the postcard around and looked at the front, at the generic view her father had chosen to commemorate his visit. Then she went back into the house… and affixed one to the card, for the mailman, later in the day, to take away.”
The act is both betrayal and grace—an acknowledgment that love, like homeland, is always partly imagined.
Conclusion: The Unrooted and the Unsaid
Lahiri’s story, like Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands, reveals that diaspora is not a fixed state but a series of negotiations.
Ruma’s father chooses freedom over duty, reinventing himself in old age.
Ruma is caught between memory and reinvention, unable to fully claim either.
The garden and the postcard symbolize the beauty and fragility of diasporic bonds—cultivated, but never permanent.
In the end, Lahiri suggests that “unaccustomed earth”—whether a garden, a new love, or a foreign country—can never fully replace the past. But it can, for a time, make life bearable.
“Life grew and grew until a certain point. The point he had reached now.”
The diaspora’s tragedy—and its triumph—is that it keeps moving, even when the heart stays behind.
