In Search of the Invisible Roots: Immigrant Experiences in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth

Abstract

This paper attempts an analysis of the metaphorical strategies Jhumpa Lahiri uses in her 2008 collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth in order to explore and comment on the intricate relations and the complex web of feelings and resentments, longing and attachment that make up the essence of family life as shaped by the diasporic experience. In this volume, Lahiri particularly focuses on the conflicting emotions engendered by migration, on the articulation of displacement and reintegration, and on the capacity to fully assume the diasporic experience and turn it into a meaningful assertion of one’s identity.