Anne Tyler's most recent addition to her body of work, "Digging to America," concerns the intersecting of different backgrounds within the canvas of family. In an era when the definition of the family is constantly changing, Tyler depicts the possibilities of mixture in an increasingly international world.
"Digging to America" opens with the arrival of two Korean babies. One is welcomed with typical pomp and circumstance by a boisterous, obtrusive American family, while the second is adopted by an Iranian-American family, which is equally enthusiastic, though more private, in the reception of its daughter. Previously unaware of each other, the two families?the Donaldsons and the Yazdans?build a friendship based on the common denominator of the adopted children.
The book is constructed primarily around the events that tie the two families together, beginning with the girls' arrival and following them into childhood. The expected cultural clashes arise between the two families, both in terms of parenting as well as the subtleties of heritage. The Donaldsons are portrayed as incredibly earnest, even if their intentions diverge from what is appropriate. Their most frequent indiscretion is their irritating interest in the exotic qualities of their new friends. The Yazdans, in turn, are presented as reserved.
The novel's perspective is passed around the group of characters. Readers are given better access to some characters rather than others and there is a feeling in the end that none of the characters was presented in full. Maryam Yazdan, the grandmother, is awarded the most prominent voice. Through her, Tyler makes clear the difficulty of leaving one's homeland for another country. It seems that no matter how much one might be welcomed into a foreign place, perhaps because of the eagerness to understand there is a lingering sense of displacement, a dormant attachment to home that prevents assimilation in its entirety.
A minor but interesting aspect of the novel is the way in which a perpetual desire to be polite results in misunderstandings. There is an unannounced strain between the Iranian mother and her mother-in-law, Maryam. Both are extremely wary of stepping over any boundaries between them, real or imagined. The delicacy with which they deal with one another often slips into discomfort for both. In a part that is slightly comical but also pitiful, a marriage proposal is accepted in order to be polite. The admission that the proposal was a mistake creates more problems than if honesty rather than etiquette had been employed at the beginning.
The members of both families come across as people who live outside the confines of the book. Once the author arrives at her point, it is not completely satisfying to see the Donaldsons and Yazdans disappear into the bookcase. Tyler constructs a perceptive view of how one's status as a foreigner plays a role in one's identity as an American, and broods on how the girls assimilate and where their complex blend of culture delivers them.