Unaccustomed Earth

Bharathi Mukherjee’s later novels Jasmine(1989), The Holder of the World(1993) and Leave It to Me(1997) comprised her last creative phase conveniently termed here as the phase of immigration. By now she has travelled a long distance in terms of thematic perception and character portrayal. Beginning with an expatriate’s uprooted identity in the early 70’s, her creative faculty explored the transitional dilemma of characters in early 80’s, whose acculturation bids were occasionally thwarted by the complexity of cultural plurality in the adopted land. However, after the publication of The Middleman(1998), the process of cultural acclimatization appears to be complete and the characters betray the confidence of an immigrant, almost a naturalized citizen, in facing the challenges of human life.

People need to look at the colonial system laws that we have created and realize that we are trying to be plant managers instead of living with nature. People must walk in nature shoes enable to make rational decisions in order to make laws that will be the most effective incorporating nature world community. People that believe in the old paradigm do not want to hear that they might be causing the problems like mastic extinctions and pollution on a globe scale. This idea is why a new universal law needs to, come into place which the book Wild Law A Manifesto for Earth Justice by Cullinan Cormac gives the reader insight of how to go about the process of including Mother Earth in law.

Ian Tattersall, author of "Masters of the Planet", is curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Tattersall was born in 1945 in the United Kingdom, and grew up in east Africa. He trained in archeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and earned his PhD from Yale University in 1971. Tattersall’s main focus over the course of his career has been on three areas; the human fossil record, the study and ecology of Lemurs in Madagascar, and finally on human cognition. He brings to the issues a lifetime of expertise in hominid evolution, as well as abundant experience in writing books for general audiences.

Immigration is widely discussed in every culture and country worldwide while is still controversial matter and has deep political connotations. Immigration could be a beautiful inspiration for writers. “Negocios” by Junot Diaz deals about Ramon’s endeavors an immigrant from Dominican Republic with a moral dilemma that involves two families in his origin country and the US. This story descriptives how immigration could affect his decisions and how he must face it. “Hell-Heaven” by Jhumpa Lahiri talks about Usha, an immigrant parents’ daughter, she and her family struggles of living between the American culture and the Bengali culture Usha’s story descriptives how her immigration background affect her identity and her feelings. There are similarities

“We should feel empowered by where we came from and who we are, not hide it,” the author Lorin Morgan-Richards once said. When given the opportunity to express oneself, one should always take that opportunity and make the most out of it. The sharing of culture is what creates such a diverse and interesting world, and culture is what defines every human being. Culture, one of the most important factors in one’s life, continually influences a person’s perspective because it forms the roots of one’s beliefs, morals, and opinions. This is especially evident throughout the stories “Where Worlds Collide,” “HAPA,” “An Indian Father’s Plea,” and “By Any Other Name.”

In our world, cultural identity is the glue that holds us all together; it provides a feeling of importance and understanding that we all need in our daily lives. But this support and positive attitude that often comes with identity can be reversed by people who use these cultural identities to generalize and oppress groups of people as shown in these two pieces of literature. “Immigrants”, by Pat Mora, is a poem that tells the story of multicultural parents that bring their children to the U.S. in the hopes that they will become proper Americans so they will be accepted.. The other piece, “By Any Other Name”, is a memoir by Santha Rama Rau and also follows a similar story about two sisters being oppressed while attending school in British-controlled India. Both “By Any Other Name” and “Immigrants” reflect each other by portraying children growing up in a prejudiced environment, but also have their differences in the unique situations that led the subjects here.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s second story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” presents the relationship between an Indian family and their friend Mr. Pirzada, a Bangladeshi migrant. The narrator of the story is a ten year old girl Lilia who is not aware of the history of the Indian subcontinent related to freedom struggle, civil war of East Pakistani etc. We see that Mr. Pirzada, Lilia’s father and mother take dinner with one another while at the same time they listen to the evening news. Though they are now in America but they want to know what is going on in their native places. It shows their longings for their respective countries though they are

Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story, “Interpreter of Maladies,” follows the adventure of an American-Indian family who are taking the role of tourists in their own native homeland. The Das family is inherently Indian, but the experience of being born and raised in America has diluted their cultural background. The Das family is a symbol of both American and Indian cultures intermixing, and due to this, the family does not completely belong in either culture.

Immigrating to a new country drastically expands one’s cultural background. This culture change can be positive or negative and greatly affects the lives of many. The author uses her characters to tell the story of what it’s like moving into a new country and experiencing a whole new lifestyle. Jumpha Lahiri uses characterization of the characters to express to the audience the cultural changes people experienced when immigrating to a new country.

All humans have many different experiences throughout their lives. However, while each individual’s experience may be dissimilar, the concepts that are pertinent to the human condition are often the same. In fact, examples of some of these concepts are shown in both stories The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Adichie and The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri. In these stories, it is shown that some experiences are less about the immigrant experience and more about the human condition. They provide evidence to demonstrate how regardless of whether a person is an immigrant or not, the positive and negative aspects of being human are universal, connecting each individual. The characteristics of being human that are illustrated in the two stories are the feeling of loneliness, the attempt to find one’s identity, and the instinct to take care of our elders.

American immigrants live a double life balancing two different cultures. In a collection of short stories, Jhampa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies, illustrates Indian-Americans caught between two identities. First, in Lahiri’s “Temporary Matter”, she uses commonplaces such as death, divorce, and pain in a story about an Indian couple living in America. In order to show that people of different cultures share similar issues, she writes about experiences commonly felt by a given audience. Shukumar and Shoba’s marriage is failing due to the loss of their child at birth.

As a young child, Lahiri struggled to find a place where she belonged in America. At home, she followed the customs of her parents, speaking Bengali and eating their food. Even though, outside of home Lahiri felt the need to hide these things from her friends. Despite the fact of her living in America, she never really felt “American.” As Lahiri got older, she began to accept her Indian heritage and brought some of it into her American life. The traditions did not always act in harmony but they helped her find peace. Her parents also helped her find acceptance in her culture. She said “Everything will change once they die. They will take certain things with them--conversations in another tongue, and perceptions about the difficulties of being

Jhumpa Lahiri, reflecting on her personal experiences and her keen observation of diasporic culture, brings lawful and touching experiences to the predicament of the Gangulis in the foreign land. The novel is indeed a work that is created by a woman who understands the convolutions that arises from a cultural merger. The novel does an excellent job of mixing along side by side the autonomous, integrated American way of life in a manner that avoids suggesting the dominance of one over the other. The Namesake does not propose the importance of either fully clasping one's cultural heritage or completely integrating into American culture; instead, it allows the reader to apprehend , if not completely, the complexity of negotiating a life where one has a foot in American culture, and the other in their ideal Bengali tradition .In short, the novel is a the a guide of experience for immigrant population of Indian

Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories in Interpreter of Maladies all deal with some aspect of belonging to more than one cultural group, whether it be Indian, American, etc. Though they each attempt to compromise with the changes in their life, whether it be moving to a different country or having an arranged marriage, the characters are disconnected from their identities or loved ones. A large part of American and Indian culture is marriage, whether it be arranged or of the person’s choice. But marriage is not an easy thing to handle if you aren’t prepared for it, and this is very prevalent in Interpreter of Maladies. Two examples this essay will speak about are Twinkle in This Blessed House and the narrator in The Third and Final Continent.

‘Interpreter of Maladies’ is a collection of nine short stories. The stories are about the Indians, caught between the culture they have inherited and the one, they have to adapt. All the stories almost remain the same in themes yet ideas differ in their perspectives. They present Indian immigrant people in different and variant roles and situations. Being herself the child of immigrant parents, living in the United States, Lahiri’s characters are also portraiture of such people, torn between two different national identities.