Digging to America by Anne Tyler

In January 2008 the Harford Out-of-the-House Book Group for Moms will be meeting in the Bel Air Branch. Please call the branch at 410-638-3151 or check our web page for details of this group and for other book groups sponsored by the Bel Air branch.

In January the Moms will be discussing Digging to America by Anne Tyler. Since my own book group just finished reading this uplifting and thought provoking book, I thought I would discuss it here. I can heartily recommend it both as a good read and as a book that a discussion group can get its teeth into. Find this large print book in our catalog.
Find this book in our catalog.

This is a novel of seemingly quiet and unremarkable lives. The novel itself is seemingly quiet and unremarkable and yet it packs a punch. In subtle and nuanced ways and with powerful psychological insight, it explores the tension between the human need to fit in with the crowd and yet assert ones own individuality. There is a lot of quiet humor in the book, and loving observation of human frailty. The reader cares about the two families, one quintessentially white middle class American and the other Iranian American, both living in Baltimore.

The families meet at BWI, when both are there to greet the arrival of two Korean infants who are being adopted by two couples, Brad and Bitsy and Sami and Ziba. The families get together over an arrival party arranged by Bitsy and afterwards their friendship develops in fits and starts, through misunderstandings and various happy and sometimes excruciatingly embarassing social occasions. Maryam, the widowed mother of Sami, and a first generation Iranian immigrant is the center of the story. It is mainly through her eyes that the reader sees twenty-first century American life, at least in the Baltimore/Washington suburbs. Maryam has always found it hard to come to terms with being part of a culture and a country. She feels foreign in America, though she has been in the country thirty-something years, and yet she no longer feels she has a home in Iran. If truth be told, she never felt she fitted in even in Iran, and when young expressed this alienation in political dissidence. Most of the book is about how she works out this dilemma.

The book also shifts to the points of view of the other characters, who are individually quirky and lovable. Stretching from the babies’ arrival in 1997 to 2004, the novel is punctuated by the annual Arrival parties and other celebrations, all of which add color and humor to the book and also offer insights into American and Iranian culture.

Conversation Starters

It is said that in the novel the two different households serve as microcosms for twenty-first American Society. Would you agree?
Bitsy and Brad Donaldson appear to be stereotypical white-middle class Americans. Is Anne Tyler condemning the stereotype? Are there occasions when they depart from the stereotype?
Maryam continually feels her “outsiderness.” Are there occasions when others feel this exclusion or “otherness?”
Some of the members of my group felt that Anne Tyler made many of her characters two-dimensional in order to make a point in the book. Do you agree? If you do, did this matter?
Other group members felt an empathy with the characters. Why would this be?
Even though some characters may be stereotypical, one reviewer found the families “utterly believable.” Do you agree?
What did you think of this portrait of immigrant life? Each character strikes a balance between assimilation and remaining true to his/her culture. What do you think of the implications of this in the book and in our own lives?
One reviewer noticed that many decisions in the book are transformed into deeply symbolic acts, subject to earnest debate. Did this make sense to you in the context of the book. In the context of your own life? Could you identify some of the symbolism in the book?
What do you think of Bitsy’s attempts to create traditions for her family?
What do you think of Anne Tyler’s language and her ability one reviewer noticed to infuse the commonplace with meaning and grace?
What did you think of the shifting from the perspective of one character to another?
Within the two extended families, many characters are able to get their own way. Can you identify some examples?

About the Author

There was an extensive article about Anne Tylaer by Jessica Teisch in Bookmarks magazine for November/December 2006.

In Washington Post, 10/22/03, Anne Tyler said this, “People have always seemed funny and strange to me, and touching in unexpected ways. I can’t shake off a sort of mist of irony that hangs over whatever I see…It just seems to me that even the most ordinary person, in real life, will turn out to have something unusual at his center.”