‘UNACCUSTOMED EARTH’ & ‘ONLY GOODNESS’: A MIGRATION MYTH

ABSTRACT

A substantial part of research on Jhumpa Lahiri fiction focuses on the question of her characters’ identity. Inhabiting the fictional world of large-scale transnational migrations, in which borders of cultures are frequently traversed and need to be constantly negotiated, Lahiri’s characters are identified as cultural hybrids, whose hyphenated identities are troubled by tension and anxiety (Bahmanpour, Bandyopadhyay, Dutt-Ballerstadt). Critics explore how these diasporic subjects adapt to the American space, and how they are involved in the processes of acceptance and resistance, which are constitutive of the fluid immigrant identity. These issues can be elucidated further when an important element in identity formation is analyzed, namely the American Dream. The following paper is meant to provide a contribution of this kind. Thus, its central goal is a discussion of the depiction of American Dream in two short stories “Unaccustomed earth” and “Only Goodness” by Jhumpa Lahiri. Three general issues will be explored: what the depiction of American Dream reveals about Indian immigrant experience, how the idea of the Dream differs between generations and how it is linked to the question of immigrant identity formation.

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