Transplanted Identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth
Transplanted Identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth

Summary/Abstract: Unaccustomed Earth (2008) is Jhumpa Lahiri’s second collection of short stories about upwardly mobile Indian immigrants, thriving in American urban spaces. The second-generation in particular shuttles between the two cultural milieus with ease (Spivak). Thus, Lahiri, whose parents migrated first to England, and then to the United States when she was a child, writes about transnational characters who develop capabilities to negotiate both worlds. By focusing on the opening short story, which also gives the title to the entire collection, I aim to show that this “model minority”, as the Indian diaspora has been called (Bhatt), eventually strikes strong roots in foreign, unaccustomed earth. I will investigate the tropes Lahiri uses in order to illustrate this process of successful transplantation.

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