In 'Unaccustomed Earth' there is a trope found in several other stories: a distant husband and father. This story may be the collection's best, based on how intimately it lets the reader into the lives of these characters. The dual perspectives lend this story a lot of weight, and the story is particularly effective in portraying the love Ruma's father develops for his grandson, Akash. Her death sends both Ruma and her father into unaccustomed earth emotionally, though it's her father who makes a new man of himself, while Ruma can't seem to reconcile this change. The story spans a week, but it provides a lengthy glimpse into the lives of both major characters, including the heartbreaking details of the death of Ruma's mother. 'Unaccustomed Earth' starts the collection, a story about an Indian-American woman named Ruma, her widowed father, and her young son. While they are rather long for short stories, they rarely fail to captivate. This 320+ page collection features eight mostly powerful stories that deal with characters finding themselves on new ground. Lahiri's themes are largely universal because everyone deals with culture clash in some fashion, large or small, and everyone at some point in their lives must tread upon unaccustomed earth.

This sets up plenty of room for culture clash, not just between different nationalities but also between different generations and the two sexes. Her characters seem heavily drawn from her own experiences, all of them American born with Indian parents (usually born in India and raised in the United States). For a woman born in London to Indian immigrants and spending most of her life growing up in the United States, the theme is appropriate. Unaccustomed Earth is not only the title of Jhumpa Lahiri's second collection of short stories, but the theme of this work and perhaps her entire canon of work.

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