Unaccustomed Earth Study Guide

Award-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri was born July 11, 1967, in England to Bengali parents and moved with her family to Rhode Island at a young age. Her father was a librarian and her mother a teacher, and Lahiri always enjoyed reading and writing. Still, she did not publish her first full-length collection of stories until she had completed extensive schooling, earning an English B.A. from Columbia and three master’s degrees and a doctorate from Boston University. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was published in 1999 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 2005, Lahiri published her first novel, The Namesake, a coming-of-age story about a Bengali family adjusting to life in the west. After moving to Rome in 2012, she began writing and publishing in Italian. Her first Italian book, In altres parole (In Other Words), a collection of essays and stories, was released in 2015 to critical acclaim. Lahiri’s work explores the immigrant experience and complex reconciliation of cultural identities, with a special focus on the dynamics within immigrant families across generations. She taught creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 until 2022, when she transitioned to Barnard College at Columbia.

The stories in Unaccustomed Earth span from the 1970s to the early 2000s, a period marked by shifting global immigration patterns and policies. The Johnson administration’s 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act lifted restrictions on Asian immigration to the United States, leading to an influx of immigration by skilled Asian professionals throughout the 1970s and 80s. First-generation immigrants faced the challenge of adjusting to a foreign cultural landscape while maintaining their Indian heritage. As second-generation immigrants came of age, they navigated assimilating into western society while balancing the high expectations of their often-traditional parents. Lahiri explores this tension between cultures through her characters, whose lives are shaped by both the desire to belong and the fear of losing cultural connections. The collection also mentions the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck on December 26 and devastated parts of South and Southeast Asia. Approximately 230,000 died in the tragedy, and millions more were displaced.

Unaccustomed Earth is often compared to Lahiri’s first short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, which also examines the Indian immigrant experience across generations. However, while Unaccustomed Earth centers Indian life in New England and the United Kingdom, Interpreter of Maladies spans a broader cultural geography, including characters living in Kolkata. Lahiri’s 2013 novel The Lowland, which she has described as her most “personally important” work in English, follows two brothers in 1960s Kolkata whose paths diverge. One remains in India and the other immigrates to the United States, their story one of familial connection and the political upheavals that shape immigrant lives. Lahiri has cited numerous authors as literary inspirations, including Alice Munro and Virginia Woolf, two writers who capture the intricacies of interpersonal relationships that Lahiri also explores. Munro’s short story collection Runaway shares Lahiri’s nuanced attention to the deep emotional undercurrents of seemingly ordinary lives. Meanwhile, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse explores personal identity and human connection, focusing on the subtle emotional conflicts within families. Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck offers a similarly nuanced, captivating examination of immigrant life. Set between Nigeria and the United States, the collection delves into the intersection of cultural identity and personal discovery, paralleling the emotional landscapes of Lahiri’s stories.