They met at the Baltimore, Washington international airport in August of 1997. The two families, though they lived mere miles apart, were vastly different. The Donaldsons were model middle-class liberal Americans. The Yazdans were first-generation Americans whose parents came from Iran. That day, however, their differences were set aside when both couples adopted baby Korean girls – both arriving that same day.
An unlikely friendship emerges between the two families, the highlight of which is the “Arrival Day celebration concocted by Bitsy Donaldson. As the two families take turns hosting the annual party, they become closer.
Author Anne Tyler, with her notorious subtly, examines what it is to be “American. The Donaldsons, secure in their “Americaness, broadcast their liberalism by giving emphasis to their adopted daughter’s Korean background, naming her Jin-Ho and dressing her in traditional Korean outfits. The Yazdans, instead, want to de-emphasize their differences, and chose a familiar American name, Susan, for their daughter, dressing her in jeans overalls.
With storytelling skills that have been honed over the years, this being her seventeenth novel, Tyler demonstrates how cultural identity is a slow, gradual process. As she grows older, Jin-Ho insists on being called Jo, possibly in an unconscious effort to affiliate herself more strongly with her American parents. Susan learns Farsi from her grandmother Maryam, not shying away from her parent’s culture but embracing it.
Maryam, Sami Yazdan’s mother, is the pivotal character in the book. Throughout the novel, Tyler shifts perspective from character to character. Maryam, though, is at the narrative and emotional heart of the touching, humorous story.
Having left Iran as a fresh university graduate, she joined her Irani husband in the US. Some forty ears later, widowed and living on the fringes of her son’s life, she still doesn’t feel “American. Her accent advertises her status as an immigrant. Maryam holds on to her “foreignness, a kind of defense mechanism. As the relationship between her family and the Donaldsons develop, she’s often puzzled by her daughter-in-law’s veneration of opinionated, sometimes overbearing Bitsy.
But Maryam is forced to re-examine her attachment to being an exotic outsider, when Bitsy’s recently widowed father begins to court her. Suddenly all the values she cherishes – her traditions, her privacy, her otherness – are in jeopardy. She begins to realize, though reluctantly, that she may be able to forge new friendships and romantic attachments in a country that has become her home.
Tyler weaves a tale of complex layers of the relationships between the families. In “Digging to America, she observes the collision of cultures without losing her astute insights on the daily dramas of modern family life.
Digging to AmericaBy Anne TylerPublished by Alfred A. Knopf
Available at the Diwan bookshop in Zamalek.
