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Assignment

On

Racial and cultural conflicts in JhumpaLahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.

Submitted By

Ripa Akter

ID: 192-128-002.

Batch 43rd

Submitted To

Dr. Rama Islam (PhD)

Associate professor,

Department of English,

Metropolitan University sylhet,

Date: 12 April 2020.

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s is Indian most famous writer, Unaccustomed Earth is Jhumpa

Lahiri’s latest work, a powerful collection of short stories. Racial and cultural harmony is

very much essential for peaceful existence of a society or a country. Jhumpa Lahiri’s is very

skillful portrays the racial and cultural conflicts in her short story collection Unaccustomed

Earth. Racial culture and ethnicity are the very significant identities that distinguish one

society from another. Lahiri’s

Unaccustomed Earth provides the readers with different paradigms of the life of the

characters with Indian roots and American life. The stories in the collection m deal with large

section, of second generation Indian American, their cultural traditions ,value system, their

feeling for home and of homelessness a separate racial and cultural identity they feel a

magnetic field of their “home culture” operative on their minds.

Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri presents the character of Akash and Rumaas nostalgic

since they migrate to a new land and also the feeling of diaspora. They recollect the

memories back at home especially in the character of Ruma. This novel also deals with the

cultural identity crisis which is faced by both the generations of the immigrant.

Lahiri’s second collection of short entitled as Unaccustomed Earth is not a celebration

of multiculturalism and hybridist. Lahiri’s themes universal, but her perspective belongs to

Diaspora individuals. Her characters displacement and identity crisis are the result of

migration, as their dislocation. In Unaccustomed Earth the first generation characters still

view India as home, India customs are maintained at home.

They visit India regularly and raise their children according to Indian norms. This is

not to say that all first generation characters confront with a constant longing for India and

have inability to settle down in the United States. Immigrants, in Lahiri’sstories, are consoled

by the satisfaction they take in their upward economic mobility.

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However, as illustrated by Ruma’s father in “Unaccustomed Earth”, that the path of a

migrant has not been an easy one , and it is filled with guilt and regret . This title story

illustrates the epigraph in a very concrete manner. Ruma’sfather plants a garden of his own

burying legos wooden building blocks, a rubber ball and a pencil into the ground. Lahiri

implies that whatever intention individuals may have for their offspring, the outcome will

depend on prevailing situations. The epigraph captures the essence of the diasporas identity

which is never complete, always in process, and constituted within, not outside.

Second generation migration characters in Unaccustomed Earth have hybrid cultural

identities feeling rootless and yearning to belong, they strive to put down roots and search for

stability in their lives. The common factor among all second generation characters is that they

must negotiate their own identity between to cultures. How successful they are in doing that

determines their happiness.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth represent several, example of women assuming,

the rote of cultural carrier. Rum experiences an identity crisis after her mother’s death, as her

mother was her main link to Bengali culture. Usha resists her mother’s attempts to raise her

as an Indian girl, and sang is horrified by the string of Indian suitors. Kaushik’s mother is all

prepared for smoking and drinking, wearing western outfits and refusing to assume the role

of the tradition upholding Indian wife. In the “Unaccustomed Earth” as well as ‘Hema and

kaushik;mother’s become a metaphor for the motherland , acquiring new identities.

Ruma’s mother has been the carrier of Indian culture in her life and the main

influence in forming Ruma’s identity. After her mother’s death, Ruma realize that she has

very little in the name of culture heritage to pass on to her own son and is engulfed by negret.

When Ruma comes to know about Mrs. Banghchi, she realizes that her father has been able

to compromise with the life he shared with his wife and now lives for the guilt of not inviting
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him to live with them, and the entire burden of upholding a cultural identity that she has been

unable to maintain.

Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth racial and cultural conflicts can be analyzed by the

immigrants and their suffering for the search of identity. The assimilation of culture and the

values, at the same time it gives a new understanding and new identities, spaces for growth,

resolution of conflicts and a new culture. Lahiri conveys even though they were living as

immigrant for many years, they could not attain the belongingness.

Unaccustomed Earth in this story is finding out the identity, and cultural differences

that the second generation immigrant face the tragedy of losing their original identity. Most

of characters moving to and from in a confused manner without negotiating properly their

racial and cultural affiliations.

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Works Cited.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in identity: Community, Culture,

Difference, Ed. Rutherford, Jonathan. London: Lawrence and wishart, 1990.print.

Lahiri , Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. New Delhi: Random House, 2008. Print

said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Routledge, 1978.print.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. (2008) . Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Vintage Books.