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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inheritance of Loss, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Globalization
Poverty vs. Privilege
Home and Belonging
Gender and Misogyny
Power and Humiliation
Summary
Analysis
The narrative jumps to Biju, who is working at a restaurant called Gray’s Papaya in the heart of Manhattan, New York. He recounts the hectic sights, sounds, and smells of the restaurant, serving hot dogs for less than a dollar in hundred-degree heat.
Biju’s storyline in America provides an argument for globalism as being an extension of colonialism. Biju makes very little because of the way he is treated as a second-class citizen, and because it is easy to take advantage of undocumented immigrants.
Themes
After work, the other restaurant employees invite him to “visit” the Dominican women in Washington Heights for thirty-five dollars. Biju is timid and feigns disgust. Each time they ask him, he thinks of an excuse not to go. He is almost relieved when the manager of the restaurant is instructed to do a green card check on his employees, and asks those without green cards to quietly leave.
Biju losing his job due to the green card check becomes an example of the vicious cycle experienced by members of what he later calls the “shadow class.” Thus, those who are not wealthy enough to be able to get a green card are then unable to get the very jobs that might allow them to become green card holders.
Themes
