Unaccustomed Earth

Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth

Unaccustomed Earth is a short story collection from the English born Indian writer Jhumpa Lahiri. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author borrows the title of her latest short story collection from The Custom-House by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who in his work writes of the belief in the power of a foreign land. That is, in oppose to most post-colonial writers, who wallow themselves in their nostalgic lamentation over their state of diaspora, the great American writer believes that the “unaccustomed earth” should bring along the greatest in human nature. Lahiri efficiently adapts to this idea and develops a series of stories that tells the life of the Indian immigrants in America, and meanwhile, allows the reader to examine the lives of these people, in a place where everything is so different from the way back home.

Contrary to most Indian writers, Lahiri tells the story of a different group of Indians by successfully tossing away the heavy baggage that has long burden and maimed most Indian writers and its people. These immigrants, after leaving their mother land, find themselves relived of many long time oppressions such as the caste system and the poverty from Indian tradition. Lahiri finds in her tale characters that are oftentimes well-educated, rich, and successful with high social status, who share the everyday family problems like all the other Americans. In a total six tales, Lahiri explores in each a unique relation, ranges from father-daughter relationship, sister-brother issue, and to childhood acquaintance.

Hawthorne’s idea of putting oneself into a foreign land might find its explanation from Freud’s theory in Mourning and Melancholia, where he suggests that “it is only via the representation of the object in its absence that the symbol can come to replace the loss as a memory which is, from then on, registered psychically”(Introjection, 177). The same idea has been discussed in the review on Robinson’s Housekeeping, that is, the presence of a lost object is re-recognized and admitted in one’s mind, in anyway stronger than with the object’s previous actual physical existence.

Writers are special in the way they perceive things. Most of the time they do not experience the stories they write; instead, as we may find in many great authors, they imagine. In the case of Lahiri’s work, her vivid portrayal offers the reader an opportunity to experience the complexity and intensity of the lives of her characters. Though Unaccustomed Earth tells the stories of Indians immigrants, the emotions it deals with are familiar to all readers. As we go in and out of the characters life, we experience more. Unaccustomed Earth, coming from the talented writer Lahiri, is the reminder of our reason to read, and also, an honest realization of our wish in the process of reading, namely, to experience differently.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a famous work by Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, a bildungsroman novel that tells the story of a black girl named Janie Crawford, whose experiences in three of her marriages eventually shape her into a complete selfhood. Hurston, in developing the story, takes on a different perspective and tone compared to her contemporaries and later writer like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, whose works often covers on the desperation and helplessness of African American women. Hurston’s success consists in the unique voice she gives to the protagonist, whose self-assurance allows her to see far beyond than others and whose emancipation is self-induced from the very start.

Janie may seem an oddity or even “new” to some readers who have a general understanding of African American Literature. Realist writers from the nineteenth century have long contribute to the shaping of woman’s voice, from Madame Bovary (1857), Anna Karenina (1875), The Awakening (1899,) to the more contemporary, feminist writings like Mrs. Dalloway(1925); however, to have an African American woman voiced her yearnings and desires, Janie may well be one of the first. Unlike most characters in her position, Janie yields not to the belief in destiny. She craves for love, and is determined to attain it however the circumstances dissuade her of being otherwise.

Therefore, the three marriages symbolize each a step towards a more mature being, for she becomes more of her self as she see more clearly, thus chooses more freely. Her first marriage is an answer to Nanny’s wish, the second being her attempted escape to the first, while only until the third one, despite much dissuasion, does she finally find the one to give her soul to. The third marriage that finally settles the Janie is the author’s mercy towards her protagonist, and despite what happens in the end, Hurston manages to infuse optimism into the much too bleak genre, like a light in the dark.

Abounds in lively, everyday vernacular dialogues, Their Eyes is a hopeful and profound reality-like fantasy that shines through its time and remains fresh until recent days. Even though the book was once criticized as being too unrealistic, and not contributing to the social realism that dominates the then literary circles, its sheer survival eventually proves that Hurston accomplishes a literary voice that transcends all the barriers between race, gender, and language, a perspective that all readers have been looking forward to sharing views and hopes with. The novel’s wide coverage on different culture experiences, together with the tear-shedding, truthful love between Janie and her third husband, should be able to satisfy all readers. The novel is a promise to a great reading experience.