Planting New Roots in an Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story Unaccustomed Earth is a beautifully written, heartfelt story that depicts the complicated relationship between a woman, Ruma, and her widowed father as they attempt to renegotiate their relationship after the death of Ruma’s mother. A second generation Bengali immigrant, Ruma is experiencing a cultural identity crisis. She has grown distant from her Bengali roots, which has significantly impacted her relationship with her father. This story is centered around a crisis of family responsibility. The understandings of family responsibility that Ruma has inherited from her parents shifts for both her and her father. This shift in notions of family responsibility/duty, which is connected to their immigration to the United States, has a profound impact on their lives.
Ruma’s disconnection from her cultural roots is made very explicit. There are many instances where shows just how detached Ruma is from her heritage. One way this is shown is through food. The narrator mentions how when Ruma’s mother used to visit she would always bring homemade mishi with her, a dish that “Ruma had never learned to make” (26). Also, Ruma does not often cook Indian food for her family, but when she does “she could afford to be lazy”, to cut corners (22). This was something that upset Ruma’s mother to hear, which made Ruma realize “how different her experience of being a wife was” from that of her mother’s (22). This contrast in her wifehood and her mother’s reflects the cultural contrast of their lives. It shows how Ruma’s notions of family responsibility have shifted in certain ways, which her mother clearly views as a kind of failure on Ruma’s part. On a final note on food, there is ‘failure’ to propery intr...

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Additionally, his sense of family responsibility for himself has changed. Lahiri paints the picture of a man who truly loves his daughter and wants her to maintain ties to their cultural heritage, but who now sees it fit that he and his daughter continue to live their individual lives, to not have to sacrifice their freedom to family responsibility.
Though this story deals with issues associated with immigration, it is not an immigration novel (or rather diaspora literature). In illustrating the experiences of one family’s encounter with the complex, tangled web of issues centered on immigration (generational gaps, acculturation/assimilation, family responsibility, etc.) Lahiri is able to get at one important human universality that goes beyond any sort of cultural context. What this story really works to reveal is the fluidity of human relationships.