Transnationalism, Adoption and Cultural Difference: Anne Tyler’s Digging to America

Abstract

Anne Tyler’s Digging to America published in 2006 presents portrayals of the changing landscape of American families within the framework of transnationalism. Her novel brings into focus the timely issue of international adoption by introducing two families who are adopting children from Korea and China. The two families are the Donaldsons, a white, upwardly mobile middle class family, and the Yazdans, a first generation of Iranian Americans. Adoptive parents tend to turn a blind eye towards the division of labor regarding adoption and reproduction between the First world and the less developed countries which makes transnational migration of Asian children possible. In addition, cultural differences between ethnic minorities are exoticized and consumed by dominant whites who lack an understanding of the history of migration and its accompanying sense of loss and suffering. While Tyler offers a critical insight into such issues as American multiculturalism, adoption and immigration, she ultimately represents dominant whites as wholehearted American citizens with good intentions toward people of different ethnic backgrounds. By delineating the process of integration which adopted children as well as the immigrants must inevitably go through, Tyler investigates the meaning of kinship and American citizenship, and the formation of ethnic identity in the transnational context.