Digging to America
Anne Tyler
 Digging to America is a story set in Baltimore, Maryland about two very different families’ experiences with adoption and their relationships with each other. Sami and Ziba Yazdan, an Iranian-American family, and Brad and Bitsy Dickinson-Donaldson, an all-American suburban family, meet at the airport on the day their infant daughters arrive from Korea to begin life in America. The two families become friends and begin a tradition of celebrating the arrival of their adopted daughters each year. The differences between the two families are apparent from the beginning, especially in the way each couple decides to raise their daughters. Brad and Bitsy choose not to Americanize their daughter, Jin-Ho; they keep her Korean name and teach her about Korean culture as she grows up. Sami and Ziba, on the other hand, choose to raise their daughter Susan like other American children. Through the efforts of Bitsy, the two families begin a tradition of celebrating their daughters’ arrival in America with an Arrival Party each year. The celebration becomes a mix of American, Korean, and Iranian culture with the different food and people present. The story continues to progress through the early childhood of Jin-Ho and Susan, displaying the differences in how they are raised and the impact it has on them as they grow older. At times, the relationship between the two families is strained because of their contrasting opinions of some issues, but they remain good friends throughout the entire story. As the lives of the two families continue to become closer, a new and separate relationship starts to flourish between Bitsy’s widowed father, Dave, and Sami’s widowed mother, Maryam. Dave has recently lost his wife to cancer and is in need of a companion to help him recover from the loss. Maryam, who has been widowed for many years, is at first reluctant to change her life of privacy for Dave, but she eventually gives in. In the end, Maryam realizes that Dave is too much of a threat to the orderly boundaries of her life, and she ends their relationship.