Hyphenated Identities: Navigating Interpersonal Challenges and the American Dream in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth

Abstract

The concept of immigrant identity involves both acts of resistance and adaptation to an unfamiliar environment. According to scholarly reports, the first waves of Indian immigrants are known to show a deep attachment to their native cultures, their ancestors, their languages, and their interpersonal relationships. On the other hand, their second-generation constantly face the challenge of moving between two different cultural contexts and finding a harmonious balance between these two divergent identities. The hyphenated identity of people in diaspora communities has a significant impact on their closest interpersonal relationships, leading to various issues such as longing for the past, feelings of isolation, mourning and melancholy, and to name a few. These issues are effectively explored by renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri in her third book, Unaccustomed Earth (2008), and are, therefore, the focus of this paper. The short stories included in this collection exhibit a poignant and intricate connection to the prevailing social landscape of contemporary society. This paper explores the impact of hyphenated identity on interpersonal relationships in the context of the ‘American Dream’ as manifest in the chosen text. Furthermore, this research paper examines the tactics employed by the characters in Lahiri’s short stories to overcome the obstacles in their diasporic encounters.