Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Sindoor and Arranged Marriages and our BookBrowse Review of Unaccustomed Earth.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About This Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and suggested reading that follow are
designed to enhance your group's discussion of
Unaccustomed Earth, a
dazzling collection of short stories by Pulitzer Prize—winner Jhumpa Lahiri.
About This Book
In eight finely crafted stories, Jhumpa Lahiri explores the expectations,
allegiances, and conflicts that both create and fray the ties between
generations. The Bengali-American families she depicts struggle with doubts and
uncertainties, emotional upheavals in their personal lives, and feelings of
displacement in the face of cultural and social shifts and changes. Many of the
characters cope with unsettling events and unanticipated feelings: a father and
his grown daughter react in surprisingly different ways to the death of the wife
and mother who anchored the family; a woman fulfills her parents' high
expectations but is haunted by her inability to save her younger brother from
self-destruction; and a young couple attending a friend's wedding confronts the
unexpected unspoken tensions in their own marriage. A magnificent trio of linked
stories traces the intersecting lives of Hema and Kaushik from their childhood
meeting in Massachusetts to a chance encounter many years later in Rome. Told
from the points of view of both characters, the three stories capture the
difficulties of reconciling the hold of the past and the freedom and
possibilities that beckon in a world in which family ties and geographical
borders are disappearing.
As she traces these journeys, both external and internal, Jhumpa Lahiri
brilliantly illuminates the emotional landscape tread by parents, children,
spouses, and lovers of every culture and generation.
Reader's Guide
- Discuss the relevance of the epigraph from Hawthorne's "The Custom House"
not just to the title story but also to the collection as a whole. In which
stories do the children successfully "strike their roots into unaccustomed
earth"? Why do others find themselves unable to establish roots? How do their
feelings of restlessness and insecurity stem from growing up in two cultures?
What other more universal problems do they experience? In what ways does their
lack of attachment to a place or culture reflect a more general trend in
society?
- In "Unaccustomed Earth," what underlies the tension in the relationship
between Ruma and her father as the story opens? What aspects of the family's
history inhibit their ability to communicate with each other? How do their
memories of Ruma's mother and the life she led influence the paths they choose
for the next stages in their lives? Do you feel more sympathy for either
character's point of view?
- In what ways does "Heaven-Hell" echo the themes explored in "Unaccustomed
Earth"? How does the way the story unfolds add to its power and its poignancy?
What parallels are there between the narrator's mother's "crush" on Pranab and
her own infatuation with him and Deborah?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
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